Paul Wellstone airplane "accident" (Democrat, Iraq war opponent)
Mel Carnahan, (Democrat) Carnahan was the second Missouri politician to die in a small plane crash. The first was Democratic Representative Jerry Litton, whose plane crashed the night he won the Democratic nomination for senate in 1976.
Liberal Republican John Heinz, (There once were liberal Republicans) opponent of the Vietnam War, proponent of health care, social services, public transportation and the environment. Urged reconciliation with Cuba. Landing gear on his small plane failed to function, and a helicopter sent to observe the problem crashed into his plane.
John Tower, (Right wing Republican) also died in a small plane crash. Tower was best known as the chair of the Tower Commission, which investigated the Reagan/Bush era Iran/Contra scandal. Led Commission that issued a report that was critical of the Reagan Administration's connections with Iran and the Nicaraguan contra guerillas.
Another member of a prominent government commission who died in an airplane accident was former Democratic representative and House Majority Leader Hale Boggs. Boggs was a member of the Warren Commission that whitewashed the JFK assasination. He went public years later with his "doubts" about Lee Harvey Oswald being the "lone gunman." Vanished with Nicholas Begich Nicholas Joseph "Nick" Begich, Sr. (April 6, 1932 – undetermined, presumed dead October 16, 1972) was a Democratic Party member of the United States House of Representatives from Alaska. He disappeared in a 1972 plane crash.
Texas Democratic Representative Mickey Leland also died in a plane crash.
Another American politician to die overseas in a plane crash was the Clinton administration's Commerce Secretary, Ronald Brown, whose plane went down in the Balkans.
Mario Cuomo - A Democrat in An Airplane
Cuomo 's Plane Is Crippled, Forcing Emergency LandingBy DON TERRY
New York Times (1857-Current file); Nov 21, 1988; ProQuest Historical Newspapers
The New York Times (1851 - 2001)pg. B3
The article reports that "shortly before 2AM" the aircraft "which was overhauled last year at a cost of about $700,000 "began to fill with smoke and an acrid odor" and made an emergency landing at a small airfield in Pennsylvania. "A network of air traffic controllers scatered across three states and a plane flying nearby helped guide the Governor's crippled aricraft to a safe landing at the airport, which was closed...." "Some transmissions from the air traffic controllers to Cuomo's plane were garbled."The same plane had been forced to make an emergency landing in July with Cuomo on board. Cuomo dropped out of the 1988 presidential race and declined to run in 1992.
The Mystery of Mario Cuomo
by Halton Adler Mann
President, Vice President, Supreme Court Justice. Many American politicians have lusted for the first, settled for the second and accepted the third when the first two prizes were not to be theirs. But only ONE man, Mario M. Cuomo, former three term Governor of New Yorkdeclined all THREE perfect and predictably successful opportunities to leavethe political battlefield and the highest elective and appointive positionsto lower common denominators, to those who were monomaniacal in their desireto be next to or at the top of Disraeli's "greasy pole". How to explain this inexplicable abdication of personal and political destiny, specifically, Governor Cuomo's refusal to run for president in 1988 or 1992--in the latter year with his private plane on the Albany tarmac--to take him to meet the New Hampshire registration deadline as a presidential candidate? Governor Cuomo's stated reason for spurning the second presidential opportunity--to stay in Albany and debate the budget with State Senate President RalphMarino--was a ridiculous excuse no one accepted. Perhaps Cuomo did not want to be president, certainly not as passionately as Bill Clinton and he thought that the inevitable primary battle would be divisive and Democrat-defeating. Rationales accompany refusals. But 1992 was his second presidential prospect and not the best. In 1988,once Gary Hart self-destructed in personal scandal and Michael Dukakis was predicted to be the worst national nominee in Democratic Party history with the exception of Al Gore who SHOULD have won the 2000 race comfortably, Mario Cuomo should have entered and would have won, defeating George Bush, Senior before his incumbency,as easily as Bill Clinton did four years later. (Mario Cuomo would have nominated a progressive Black judge to Thurgood Marshall's Supreme Courtseat, therefore giving Gore the fifth vote he would need to continue the Florida recount. Clarence Thomas would have remained an unknown name in the meretricious American spectacle.)
Former CIA Agent Tells Glenn Beck on Fox News That He Wants To See A Grave Attack on the United States:
Michael Scheuer is hoping Osama bin Laden Detonates a major weapon in the U.S.:
" The only chance we have as a country right now is for Osama bin Laden to deploy and detonate a major weapon in the United States.
"Because it's going to take a grassroots, bottom up pressure, because these politicians prize their office, prize the praise of the media and the Europeans. It's an absurd situation, again. Only Osama can execute an attack that will force Americans to demand a government protect them effectively, consistently and with as much violence as necessary. "
...and Beck just sits there nodding in agreement.
What Israel Has Done to Palestinian Children With U.S. Taxpayers' Dollars
Sunday, July 05, 2009
A Hint to Al Franken, Minnesota's New Senator: Take The Train
Say what he will, Al Franken has finally beaten Norm Coleman in a bitter fight for the 60th seat in the US Senate. The Democratic Party, voted for by progressives, by union members, by discriminated against minorities, single mothers, gay people and people who want the government out of their personal lives, the party that for better or worse encapsulates the hopes of these groups of people, now has control of the United States Senate. It has sixty votes and it can shut down Republican obstruction of progressive measures. Personally I think the hopes of these groups of people are going to be betrayed more often than not, but the Dems have a bit less room for excuses and are under pressure to actually bring home some results. I do not know how sincere Senator Franken is. I know he can be a funny guy. I want to see some progressive changes in the US and the world. I want Senator Franken to be carefull and aware because I want him to vote in real health insurance reform that gets all people covered for all illnesses, I want to beat back the attack on women's right to choose, I want Social Security to be defended. These are the things Democrats might still be good for. I hope so.
Before Norm Coleman there was Paul Wellstone.
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/110102_wellstone.html
Democrats Twice As Likely to Die In Crashes
This item is being republished as a public service, and is not being used for profit It was found on the internet on a site that did not require subscription. I feel it is timely given Al Franken's election to the Senate, although the item is "dated."
Was Paul Wellstone Murdered?
History Suggests It
Crash Inconsistencies Suggest It
Many, Including Some Members of Congress, Believe It
by Michael C. Ruppert
[© Copyright 2002, From The Wilderness Publications, www.fromthewilderness.com. All rights reserved. THIS IS A SUBSCRIBER-ONLY STORY AND MAY NOT BE POSTED ON A WEB SITE WITHOUT EXPRESS WRITTEN PERMISSION. Contact media@copvcia.com. This story may be redistributed, circulated or copied for non-profit purposes only.]
Nov. 1, 2002, 15:00 PST (FTW) -- The air crash deaths of Sen. Paul Wellstone, his wife, daughter, three staff members and two pilots at approximately 10:25 a.m. on Oct. 25 in Eveleth, Minn. has given rise to the widespread belief -- shared by at least two members of the House of Representatives who spoke on condition of anonymity -- that the crash was a murder.
Just as important as the known details of the crash, in many cases contradicting mainstream press reports, is the fact that the belief is so widely held. It says something about America that cannot and should not be ignored.
A HISTORY TOO FULL OF COINCIDENCES
From a historical standpoint Democrats are twice as likely to die in air crashes as Republicans. Frequently, those who have died were known to have been either involved in the investigation of covert operations or to have taken highly controversial positions in opposition to vested government interests.
Sam Smith of the Progressive Review (www.prorev.com) published an Oct. 25 story titled "Politicians Killed In Plane Crashes." For his source he used a wonderful database found at http://politicalgraveyard.com. Of 22 air crashes involving state and federal officials, including one ambassador (Arnold Raphael) and one cabinet official (Ron Brown), FTW found that 14 (64 percent) were members of the Democratic Party and 8 (36 percent) were members of the Republican Party. If the list was limited to only elected members of Congress, the total was eight Democrats and four Republicans.
Six of the fatalities occurred during election campaigns. Of those, four were Democrats and two were Republicans. Maybe Democrats can't afford the same type of planes that Republicans can. That certainly was not the case with Paul Wellstone who was killed in a Beechcraft King Air 100, twin turboprop. The King Air is a favorite of many politicians and is widely regarded as the "Cadillac" of twin-engined propeller driven airplanes. The state of Minnesota owns two of them. And as FTW reported in October 1999, a Beechcraft King Air owned by the state of Texas was a personal favorite of then-Gov. George W. Bush. That particular King Air had a sordid past however. It had previously been owned by the legendary drug smuggler Barry Seal. (The Associated Press picked up our story of the plane's history).
To read our story on the Bush/Seal airplane connection, please visit:
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ciadrugs/W_plane.html.
Wellstone's airplane
Several names on the list are readily connected to intrigue.
Rep. Hale Boggs, D-La., was killed in 1972 and had been an outspoken member of the Warren Commission investigating the assassination of JFK. Various sources reported that he had openly expressed doubts about the commission's findings.
Rep. Jerry Litton, D-Mo., was killed while campaigning for a U.S. Senate seat from Missouri nearly two months before the 1976 election. This was exactly the same fate that was to befall Missouri Democratic Gov. Mel Carnahan twenty-four years later.
Rep. Larry McDonald, D-Ga. and the national chairman of the John Birch Society and creator of a private intelligence operation called Western Goals, was killed on KAL 007 after it had mysteriously veered off course on a flight to South Korea and ventured several hundred miles into Soviet territory. The plane was shot down by the Soviet air force. At the time, McDonald's Western Goals was being exposed in an LAPD intelligence scandal linked to massive domestic spying, the CIA and covert operatives like Gen. John Singlaub.
Rep. Larkin Smith, D-Miss. was killed in a private plane crash in 1989. At the time he had been working with veterans of U.S. Army Special Forces looking into the deaths of five Green Beret colonels, all of whom had been connected to a covert CIA drug operation known as Watchtower. [Details of Smith's death are included in the FTW package "The Tyree Papers."]
Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown, a Democrat, was killed in a plane crash in Croatia on April 3, 1996. There are many unresolved mysteries with this incident, not the least of which is a color photograph of a post mortem Brown, which is frequently displayed by comedian/activist Dick Gregory, clearly showing a bullet wound in the back of his skull.
John Tower, a recently retired Republican senator from Texas known for his heavy drinking, was writing a book about the Iran-Contra affair when he was killed in a plane crash in 1991. Tower had reportedly been extremely unhappy when he had been denied an appointment as secretary of defense by President George Herbert Walker Bush. Tower had also been the chairman of a Reagan-appointed independent commission investigating Iran-Contra.
THE WELLSTONE CRASH
Perhaps no member of the Senate ranked higher on the Bush Administration's enemies list than Minnesota Democrat Paul Wellstone. And the enmity goes back years to when Bush's father was president. The Nov. 4 issue of Time recounts an encounter between Wellstone and the elder Bush after which he referred to Wellstone as "this chickenshit." And it is known that there has been at least one prior reported attempt on Wellstone's life.
In the months before his death Wellstone had voted against several key Bush agendas including Homeland Security, the Iraqi use of force resolution and many of Bush's judicial nominees. In a Senate controlled 50-49 by the Democrats, Wellstone was perhaps the single one-man obstacle to Bush's fervent and stated desire to secure passage of the Homeland Security measure prior to a U.S. invasion of Iraq.
When the Senate reconvenes after the Nov. 5 election the balance will be 49-49 with one independent, Sen. Jim Jeffords of Vermont. Jeffords has been caucusing with the Democrats. If there is a tie vote, Vice President Dick Cheney, as president of the Senate, will decide the outcome.
Of special interest now is the Missouri Senate race, where the victor will be seated immediately after the election. Jean Carnahan -- whose husband Mel was killed in a similar plane crash two years ago -- seeks to hold on to a seat she gained by filling in for her husband after his death just days before the 2000 election. Under Missouri law, because of the death, the seat is only legally occupied until a new election is held.
So what happened to Paul Wellstone?
A check of more than 50 of the world's leading news organizations three days after the Wellstone crash left one clear impression: the crash had been caused by "freezing rain and snow," limited visibility, and likely icing of the wings. One CNN report on Oct. 24 described the plane as flying in "snowy, frozen rain."
None of these conditions, which did not exist as just described, had anything to do with the crash.
Icing can be ruled out for a number of reasons. First, as reported in the St. Paul Pioneer Press on Oct. 29, "Another pilot who landed a slightly larger twin engine plane at the airport on Friday, a couple of hours before Wellstone's plane crashed, said in an interview that he experienced no significant problems.
"Veteran pilot Ray Juntunen said there was very light ice, 'but nothing to be alarmed about. It shouldn't have been a problem.'
"He said he ran into moderate icing conditions at 10,000 feet and requested permission to drop to 5,000. At that altitude, he had only light icing. When he dropped to 3,400 feet, to begin his approach, 'the ice slid off the windshield,' he said.
"According to the NTSB [National Transportation Safety Board], Wellstone's pilots received warnings of icing at 9,000 to 11,000 feet and were allowed to descend to 4,000 feet. Juntunen said he was able to see the airport from five miles out, and another pilot landed a half-hour later and told him the clouds were a little lower, but still not bad."
Various local press reports state that the weather conditions at the time of the crash were overcast, with visibility of three miles and a ceiling of 700 feet.
An argument that the weather worsened immediately after these two pilots landed and before Wellstone crashed is belied by the fact that a contemporaneous Doppler weather radar map of the region obtained by FTW from the National Weather Service shows no major storm activity and the same basic conditions as reported previously.
[Click image to enlarge.]
(Note: Image shows time in GMT. Duluth, MN is GMT -6.)
To further clarify this, FTW interviewed a retired commercial airline pilot who still maintains full current FAA certifications. The pilot, who asked not to be identified by name, provided FTW with copies of his pilot's license, his current FAA medical certificate, and his gold membership card in the Airline Pilot's Association.
Upon reviewing the radar map he stated that there was nothing inherently dangerous in what he saw depending upon what additional conditions might be prevalent at the time like ceiling and visibility. When advised that the reported visibility was three miles with a ceiling of 700 feet he stated, "That shouldn't be any problem, especially if you have planes taking off right before and even at the time of the crash."
In various press reports the King Air was described as an excellently powered aircraft, and that de-icing equipment was standard.
And the Pioneer Press reported on Oct. 26 that Gary Ulman, the assistant manager of the Eveleth-Virginia Municipal Airport, "jumped into his own private plane and took off in search of the missing aircraft" after noting the Wellstone plane's delayed arrival. Therefore, the icing conditions could not have been a contributing factor in the crash, or else the airport manager would not have taken off.
What has been disclosed by various local press sources, including stories in the Oct. 28 and 29 Pioneer Press, is the following:
- The plane, although it was required to have only one, had two fully licensed commercial pilots. The lead pilot had 5,200 hours of flying time and the highest possible certification. No physical problems had been reported with either pilot;
- The plane was not required to and did not have either a flight data recorder or a cockpit voice recorder;
- Wellstone's plane had notified the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) that it was on approach to the airport and had activated the runway lights;
- The time from the last radio contact with the FAA when everything was normal until the crash was approximately 60 seconds;
- The pilots -- as is standard procedure for unmanned airports -- had sent a radio signal from their airplane to equipment at the airport which turned on the runway lights and activated a directional beacon that would align the plane with the runway. [Note: The Eveleth airport was not equipped with a more sophisticated remotely activated instrument landing system that would have provided feedback to the pilots on speed, rate of descent and above ground altitude];
- The FAA found that "an airport landing beacon, owned and maintained by the state...[was]...out of tolerance Saturday and was retesting Sunday." This was later confirmed by the acting chairwoman of the NTSB, Carol Carmody; [Note: According to the NTSB web site Carmody formerly worked for the Central Intelligence Agency.]
- The runway selected ran directly east to west and that Wellstone's plane was on final approach from the east;
- According to FAA records as reported Oct. 29 in the WWorkers Daily, at 10:19 a.m. at an altitude of 3,500 feet the plane began to drift away from the runway toward the south;
- According to the same source, the plane was last sighted at 10:21 a.m. flying at 1,800 feet;
- Wellstone's plane was found approximately two miles south of the eastern half of the runway, facing south. [Early press reports placed the crash site at between 2-7 miles east of the runway. Subsequent television reports, accompanied by maps, placed the crash site at this location. FTW is continuing to investigate the exact location of the crash site.];
- The propellers were turning at the time of the crash;
- The angle of impact was 30 degrees (extremely steep), indicating the plane was out of control;
- The wing flaps, which should have been fully extended for landing were only extended to 15 degrees (a setting used for initial approach descent);
- That the plane had been traveling at approximately 85 knots.
One quote from the Pioneer Press is interesting. "Radar tapes indicate the plane had descended to about 400 feet and was traveling at only 85 knots near the end of its flight. It then turned south, dove at an unusually steep angle and crashed."
Aside from the aircraft's sudden change in direction and the setting of the flaps, the airspeed is perhaps the most intriguing known element in the crash. A number of factors, if the data which had been released by the NTSB is to be believed, indicate that the Wellstone plane stalled just before crashing. A stall usually occurs when an aircraft's nose is raised too steeply for the throttle setting of the engine.
One account of a King Air's stall characteristics can be found at http://www.ainonline.com/Features/Pilotreports2000/AIN_pr_kingair.html.
This text described a situation where the stall warning horn (an alert that warns if airspeed is too slow) was activated under landing conditions (gear down with full flaps) at 85 knots. This writer has been in several small aircraft and experienced the noise. It is intentionally loud, distracting and unmistakable. The account stated that the actual stall did not occur until the aircraft being tested reached 69 knots. That's 16 knots slower than what was reported.
Other factors like the plane's total weight and center of gravity might have changed these outcomes. The FAA lists the standard approach speed for a King Air B 100 (the type carrying Wellstone) as 111 knots. Therefore the crash speed was significantly below the recommended approach speed which is generally estimated at 1.3 times the manufacturer's listed stall speed.
The fact that the planes flaps were extended only 15 degrees would have raised the stall speed.
SPECULATION
This writer has spoken to several pilots who have flown high-risk covert missions for the CIA or the Department of Defense. One of them related to me once that it would be easy to cause an aircraft to fly right into the ground by recalibrating the airport's IFR approach equipment and resetting the altitude. In fact, such a scenario was used in the movie Die Hard II.
But the Eveleth airport was equipped with only a directional beacon to line the plane up with the runway. It has already been established that this equipment was not "properly calibrated" and yet there are no reports of any deviations by either of the two pilots who landed safely shortly before the crash. That might have been what caused Wellstone's plane to veer off to the south.
Several press reports have described small hills around the airport.
Given that the ceiling was only about 700 feet and the plane's rate of descent would have been between 300 and 500 feet per minute it is possible that the plane emerged from the clouds close to the ground and the pilots, seeing that they were off course, initiated a sharp left turn toward the south to initiate a go-around. They would not have turned right because that would have taken them at an angle over the center of the runway, something pilots are trained not to do to avoid collisions.
From this point, answers are hard to come by. A physical examination of the crash site might reveal a large hill that would have been immediately in front of the aircraft when it emerged from the clouds. FTW has not found any press reports that address this point.
An imminent head-on crash into a hillside would have prompted a "Hail Mary" yanking back of the control yoke and an instant move to full throttle. FTW has seen no press reports indicating the throttle settings of Wellstone's plane -- only statements that the propellers were turning.
Mechanical sabotage of flight controls that would only be triggered under certain conditions or an incapacitating gas might also offer explanations as to why a stall warning horn was not responded to. King Airs have pressurized cabins.
There are many questions, but the circumstances of the crash, as known thus far, do not lead to conclusions of pilot error, mechanical failure or bad weather. What does that leave? It leaves us with three dead Democratic senatorial candidates (Litton - 1976, Carnahan - 2000, and Wellstone - 2002) who all died in small private airplanes just days before critical elections.
ARGUING WITH BLITZER OVER THE DEATH OF A KNOWN TARGET
Many experienced internet researchers, especially post-9-11, understand the importance of immediately securing local press reports and eyewitness statements to pivotal events in the moments after they occur. Several keen observers were able to transcribe the following live dialogue between an on-the-scene reporter and CNN's Wolf Blizter.
Reporter: There is no evidence that weather had anything to do with the crash.
Blizter: But the plane was flying into some sort of ice storm, was it not?
Reporter: There is no evidence that the weather had anything to do with the crash.
According to these observers CNN immediately cut away from the on-scene reporter who was not heard from again. Other watchers noted a crawl along the bottom of the screen which, they said, ran only one time, "Weather not a factor in crash."
Yet the stories currently posted on the CNN site still suggest that the crash was caused by bad weather and icing.
Paul Wellstone had been a target of an assassin once before. He was strident opponent of Plan Colombia, a U.S. military aid package which involves massive aerial spraying of lands believed to be growing cocaine and the use of private military contractors employed by companies like DynCorp. Wellstone had traveled to Colombia to evaluate the program.
Shortly after his arrival on Dec. 1, 2000, as reported by a number of news sources including the AP, a bomb was found along his route from the airport. Although the State Department later downplayed the incident, the general opinion was, and remains, that as an outspoken critic of CIA and covert operations, Wellstone had indeed been a target.
Those suspicions gained credibility the next day when Wellstone and his staff were sprayed with glyphosate, a chemical that has been routinely documented as the cause of a variety of illnesses in the local population. It has left certain regions of Colombia, as one native put it, "Without butterflies or birds."
One anonymous author, using the pen name Voxfux, actually predicted Wellstone's assassination in spring 2001. The story can be read at www.voxnyc.com. In that missive the author predicted, "If the death occurs just prior to the midterm senatorial elections, expect it to be in a state with a close race. Expect a 'Mel Carnahan' style hit."
INSIDE SOURCES
FTW was able to receive comments on the crash from two Democratic members of the House of Representatives. Both, who spoke on condition of anonymity, stated that they believed that Wellstone had been murdered.
One said, "I don't think there's anyone on the Hill who doesn't suspect it. It's too convenient, too coincidental, too damned obvious. My guess is that some of the less courageous members of the party are thinking about becoming Republicans right now."
It is a rare occurrence when this writer refers to a quote from an unnamed CIA source. I have demonstrated in at least four interviews with the staffs of both the Senate and House Intelligence committees established that I know sources who have worked for the CIA in some very nasty covert operations.
The day after the crash I received a message from a former CIA operative who has proven extremely reliable in the past and who is personally familiar with these kinds of assassinations. The message read, "As I said earlier, having played ball (and still playing in some respects) with this current crop of reinvigorated old white men, these clowns are nobody to screw around with. There will be a few more strategic accidents. You can be certain of that."
Quo Vadis?
Different Kinds Of Jews (II)
Continued from Different Kinds Of Jews (I)
Well, you'd be surprised to know that in a weird way my parents and I were "orthodox" (that's right, bacon eating orthodox Jews). While my parents raised me to "not believe in God" they also raised me to be a Jewish nationalist. Their sect is very common in Israel, a little less so in the west. This sect looks down on Reform Judaism, Conservative Judaism and any other "watered down" Judaism as less Jewish, or almost "not Jewish" but assimilationist! Yet they themselves profess not to be religious, even to be secular and even many "atheist." So the Judaism that my parents didn't practice and yet were of ws the orthodox brand. This sect is so strong in Israel (and my parents never even visited Israel) that in alliance with the actual Talmud toting hirsute wearers of black, this sect has helped marginalize Reform Judaism and Conservative Judaism in Israhell. So a rabbi of either of those "watered down" branches cannot, for example, perform a marriage in Israel. This is a political problem because most Jews in the West who attend any Jewish religious services at all go to the "watered down" branches, and so if they go to the stolen land of milk and honey their religion, though Jewish, is actually "second class" under the law.
Okay so "mom religious orthodox Jews" are a kind of Jew, as are Reform and Conservative and Reconstructionist Jews also kinds of Jews.
I mentioned the Talmud here. Now when I was going to cheder (Jewish after-school) the school was also called "Talmud-Torah." People who study about the Talmud online have found that the book(s) is pretty much hostile to Christianity and to non-Jews, though thee are sites that also deny this. I can say that in Talmud-Torah back then, over fifty years ago, I was not taught any of these hostile to Christianity doctrines directly out of the Talmud. I would not have believed that they exist. Now to me Talmudic Judaism involves a lot of game playing with God. Let me explain. As an example, let's look at the sabbath elevator. Orthodox Judaism has adapted to modern artifacts such as the elevator by ruling that one may enter an elevator on the Sabbath but one may not press a button to direct the elevator to a given floor. So in New York in lots of public buildings you have a Sabbath elevator that is programmed between Friday and Saturday sundowns to stop at every floor of the building without anyone having to press a button. so the Talmud believer may enter the elevator, go to his desired floor and not violate the Sabbath injunction against working. (If he walks several flights of stairs he is not working, if he rides an elevator he is working.) If God indeed prohibits "working" on the sabbath this is one way to "get around" that rule.
Next we look at the proscription on "carrying" on the sabbath. Orthodox rabbis say that one may not carry house keys or a book, for example, outside the walls of one's home on the sabbath. This presents a problem, but they also present a way to "get around" the rule. They get local secular authorities to create an "eruv" make believe walss of a make believe home, so that orthodox Jews may "carry", and even read a book in a public place, because God now believes that the public place is really a part of the Orthodox Jew's home and therefore grants a pass on the "no carry" rule. This involves having the uthorities to connect by string or netting public lamposts so that the zone inside the string or netting is a "modified permissive zone for the Talmud toters.
http://www.yaledailynews.com/articles/view/17868?badlink=1
I'll get bak top all this later.
Well, you'd be surprised to know that in a weird way my parents and I were "orthodox" (that's right, bacon eating orthodox Jews). While my parents raised me to "not believe in God" they also raised me to be a Jewish nationalist. Their sect is very common in Israel, a little less so in the west. This sect looks down on Reform Judaism, Conservative Judaism and any other "watered down" Judaism as less Jewish, or almost "not Jewish" but assimilationist! Yet they themselves profess not to be religious, even to be secular and even many "atheist." So the Judaism that my parents didn't practice and yet were of ws the orthodox brand. This sect is so strong in Israel (and my parents never even visited Israel) that in alliance with the actual Talmud toting hirsute wearers of black, this sect has helped marginalize Reform Judaism and Conservative Judaism in Israhell. So a rabbi of either of those "watered down" branches cannot, for example, perform a marriage in Israel. This is a political problem because most Jews in the West who attend any Jewish religious services at all go to the "watered down" branches, and so if they go to the stolen land of milk and honey their religion, though Jewish, is actually "second class" under the law.
Okay so "mom religious orthodox Jews" are a kind of Jew, as are Reform and Conservative and Reconstructionist Jews also kinds of Jews.
I mentioned the Talmud here. Now when I was going to cheder (Jewish after-school) the school was also called "Talmud-Torah." People who study about the Talmud online have found that the book(s) is pretty much hostile to Christianity and to non-Jews, though thee are sites that also deny this. I can say that in Talmud-Torah back then, over fifty years ago, I was not taught any of these hostile to Christianity doctrines directly out of the Talmud. I would not have believed that they exist. Now to me Talmudic Judaism involves a lot of game playing with God. Let me explain. As an example, let's look at the sabbath elevator. Orthodox Judaism has adapted to modern artifacts such as the elevator by ruling that one may enter an elevator on the Sabbath but one may not press a button to direct the elevator to a given floor. So in New York in lots of public buildings you have a Sabbath elevator that is programmed between Friday and Saturday sundowns to stop at every floor of the building without anyone having to press a button. so the Talmud believer may enter the elevator, go to his desired floor and not violate the Sabbath injunction against working. (If he walks several flights of stairs he is not working, if he rides an elevator he is working.) If God indeed prohibits "working" on the sabbath this is one way to "get around" that rule.
Next we look at the proscription on "carrying" on the sabbath. Orthodox rabbis say that one may not carry house keys or a book, for example, outside the walls of one's home on the sabbath. This presents a problem, but they also present a way to "get around" the rule. They get local secular authorities to create an "eruv" make believe walss of a make believe home, so that orthodox Jews may "carry", and even read a book in a public place, because God now believes that the public place is really a part of the Orthodox Jew's home and therefore grants a pass on the "no carry" rule. This involves having the uthorities to connect by string or netting public lamposts so that the zone inside the string or netting is a "modified permissive zone for the Talmud toters.
http://www.yaledailynews.com/articles/view/17868?badlink=1
I'll get bak top all this later.
Thursday, July 02, 2009
Different Kinds Of Jews (I)
I'm 63 years old and was born a Jew. My parents never kept a Kosher kitchen, they didn't bring me to a synagogue except on the day I was Bar Mitzvahed (though they allowed me to be Bar Mitzvahed in an orthodox synagogue and take the necessary pre-requisite classes because that is what I wanted to do). I had wanted this Bar Mitzvah because I wanted to honor my religious grandparents and because I wanted to spite Hitler and all Jew haters. This desire of mine had nothing to do with believing in God or in wanting to follow God's law. Part of Bar Mitzvah preparations involved attending several Sabbath services at the synagogue (without my parents who were as I told you, "not religious" and didn't attend any synagogue services). Then I'd go out and get a slice of peperoni pizza. And I was definitely a kind of a Jew!
Now if Jewishness is connected to Judaism (it is) and Judaism is a religion (yes, it is) how could someone be a "non-religious Jew"? (and possibly the majority of Jews alive today would say they are just that). Well, the short answer is it is not possible. There are Jews who even believe that they are non-religious, and say that they are non-religious, but it just isn't so. They belong to probably the largest and yet least formal branch of Judaism, one with sub branches to boot, as several branches also have. And all subscribe to the basic jewish law which I shall "reveal" later.
The mother lode of Judaism is Orthodox Judaism, which is based on the Talmud which is newer than Christianity. Some people hold that the Talmud is a reaction to Christianity:
http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/i8383.html
"...the New Testament and the Talmud, could not be more different in form and content: the one, written in Greek, is concerned about the mission of this Jesus of Nazareth, who, regarded as the Messiah and the Son of God, was rejected in this claim by most of his fellow Jews, put to death by the Roman governor Pontius Pilate, and resurrected on the third day after his crucifixion and taken up into heaven; the other, written mostly in Aramaic, is a huge collection of mainly legal discussions that deal with the intricacies of a daily life conducted according to the rabbinic interpretations of Jewish law.
Moreover, and here things become much more complicated, with the juxtaposition of “Jesus” and the “Talmud” bordering on an oxymoron, both stand in a highly charged and antagonistic relationship with each other. The Jewish sect triggered by Jesus in Palestine would eventually evolve into a religion of its own, a religion to boot that would claim to have superseded its mother religion and position itself as the new covenant against the old and outdated covenant of the people of Israel by birth. And at precisely the time when Christianity rose from modest beginnings to its first triumphs, the Talmud (or rather the two Talmudim) would become the defining document of those who refused to accept the new covenant, who so obstinately insisted on the fact that nothing had changed and that the old covenant was still valid..."
and so, first came Christinity and then came talmudic Judaism.
Well, this is a lengthy topic, more later. Stay tuned.
Go To Different Kinds Of Jews (II)
Now if Jewishness is connected to Judaism (it is) and Judaism is a religion (yes, it is) how could someone be a "non-religious Jew"? (and possibly the majority of Jews alive today would say they are just that). Well, the short answer is it is not possible. There are Jews who even believe that they are non-religious, and say that they are non-religious, but it just isn't so. They belong to probably the largest and yet least formal branch of Judaism, one with sub branches to boot, as several branches also have. And all subscribe to the basic jewish law which I shall "reveal" later.
The mother lode of Judaism is Orthodox Judaism, which is based on the Talmud which is newer than Christianity. Some people hold that the Talmud is a reaction to Christianity:
http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/i8383.html
"...the New Testament and the Talmud, could not be more different in form and content: the one, written in Greek, is concerned about the mission of this Jesus of Nazareth, who, regarded as the Messiah and the Son of God, was rejected in this claim by most of his fellow Jews, put to death by the Roman governor Pontius Pilate, and resurrected on the third day after his crucifixion and taken up into heaven; the other, written mostly in Aramaic, is a huge collection of mainly legal discussions that deal with the intricacies of a daily life conducted according to the rabbinic interpretations of Jewish law.
Moreover, and here things become much more complicated, with the juxtaposition of “Jesus” and the “Talmud” bordering on an oxymoron, both stand in a highly charged and antagonistic relationship with each other. The Jewish sect triggered by Jesus in Palestine would eventually evolve into a religion of its own, a religion to boot that would claim to have superseded its mother religion and position itself as the new covenant against the old and outdated covenant of the people of Israel by birth. And at precisely the time when Christianity rose from modest beginnings to its first triumphs, the Talmud (or rather the two Talmudim) would become the defining document of those who refused to accept the new covenant, who so obstinately insisted on the fact that nothing had changed and that the old covenant was still valid..."
and so, first came Christinity and then came talmudic Judaism.
Well, this is a lengthy topic, more later. Stay tuned.
Go To Different Kinds Of Jews (II)
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
ISRAEL ATTACKS JUSTICE BOAT; KIDNAPS HUMAN RIGHTS WORKERS; CONFISCATES MEDICINE, TOYS AND OLIVE TREES
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
30 June 2009
For more information contact:
Greta Berlin (English)
tel: +357 99 081 767 / friends@freegaza.org
Caoimhe Butterly (Arabic/English/Spanish):
tel: +357 99 077 820 / sahara78@hotmail.co.uk
www.FreeGaza.org
[23 miles off the coast of Gaza, 15:30pm] - Today Israeli Occupation Forces attacked and boarded the Free Gaza Movement boat, the SPIRIT OF HUMANITY, abducting 21 human rights workers from 11 countries, including Noble laureate Mairead Maguire and former U.S. Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney (see below for a complete list of passengers). The passengers and crew are being forcibly dragged toward Israel.
“This is an outrageous violation of international law against us. Our boat was not in Israeli waters, and we were on a human rights mission to the Gaza Strip,” said Cynthia McKinney, a former U.S. Congresswoman and presidential candidate. “President Obama just told Israel to let in humanitarian and reconstruction supplies, and that’s exactly what we tried to do. We're asking the international community to demand our release so we can resume our journey.”
According to an International Committee of the Red Cross report released yesterday, the Palestinians living in Gaza are “trapped in despair.” Thousands of Gazans whose homes were destroyed earlier during Israel’s December/January massacre are still without shelter despite pledges of almost $4.5 billion in aid, because Israel refuses to allow cement and other building material into the Gaza Strip. The report also notes that hospitals are struggling to meet the needs of their patients due to Israel’s disruption of medical supplies.
“The aid we were carrying is a symbol of hope for the people of Gaza, hope that the sea route would open for them, and they would be able to transport their own materials to begin to reconstruct the schools, hospitals and thousands of homes destroyed during the onslaught of "Cast Lead”. Our mission is a gesture to the people of Gaza that we stand by them and that they are not alone" said fellow passenger Mairead Maguire, winner of a Noble Peace Prize for her work in Northern Ireland.
Just before being kidnapped by Israel, Huwaida Arraf, Free Gaza Movement chairperson and delegation co-coordinator on this voyage, stated that: “No one could possibly believe that our small boat constitutes any sort of threat to Israel. We carry medical and reconstruction supplies, and children’s toys. Our passengers include a Nobel peace prize laureate and a former U.S. congressperson. Our boat was searched and received a security clearance by Cypriot Port Authorities before we departed, and at no time did we ever approach Israeli waters.”
0A
Arraf continued, “Israel’s deliberate and premeditated attack on our unarmed boat is a clear violation of international law and we demand our immediate and unconditional release.”
###
WHAT YOU CAN DO!
CONTACT the Israeli Ministry of Justice
tel: +972 2646 6666 or +972 2646 6340
fax: +972 2646 6357
CONTACT the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs
tel: +972 2530 3111
fax: +972 2530 3367
CONTACT Mark Regev in the Prime Minister's office at:
tel: +972 5 0620 3264 or +972 2670 5354
mark.regev@it.pmo.gov.il
CONTACT the International Committee of the Red Cross to ask for their assistance in establishing the wellbeing of the kidnapped human rights workers and help in securing their immediate release!
Red Cross Israel
tel: +972 3524 5286
fax: +972 3527 0370
tel_aviv.tel@icrc.org
Red Cross Switzerland:
tel: +41 22 730 3443
fax: +41 22 734 8280
Red Cross USA:
tel: +1 212 599 6021
fax: +1 212 599 6009
###
Kidnapped Passengers from the Spirit of Humanity include:
Khalad Abdelkader, Bahrain
Khalad is an engineer representing the Islamic Charitable Association of Bahrain.
Othman Abufalah, Jordan
Othman is a world-renowned journalist with al-Jazeera TV.
Khaled Al-Shenoo, Bahrain
Khaled is a lecturer with the University of Bahrain.
Mansour Al-Abi, Yemen
Mansour is a cameraman with Al-Jazeera TV.
Fatima Al-Attawi, Bahrain
Fatima is a relief=2 0worker and community activist from Bahrain.
Juhaina Alqaed, Bahrain
Juhaina is a journalist & human rights activist.
Huwaida Arraf, US
Huwaida is the Chair of the Free Gaza Movement and delegation co-coordinator for this voyage.
Ishmahil Blagrove, UK
Ishmahil is a Jamaican-born journalist, documentary film maker and founder of the Rice & Peas film production company. His documentaries focus on international struggles for social justice.
Kaltham Ghloom, Bahrain
Kaltham is a community activist.
Derek Graham, Ireland
Derek Graham is an electrician, Free Gaza organizer, and first mate aboard the Spirit of Humanity.
Alex Harrison, UK
Alex is a solidarity worker from Britain. She is traveling to Gaza to do long-term human rights monitoring.
Denis Healey, UK
Denis is Captain of the Spirit of Humanity. This will be his fifth voyage to Gaza.
Fathi Jaouadi, UK
Fathi is a British journalist, Free Gaza organizer, and delegation co-coordinator for this voyage.
Mairead Maguire, Ireland
Mairead is a Nobel laureate and renowned peace activist.
Lubna Masarwa, Palestine/Israel
Lubna is a Palestinian human rights activist and Free Gaza organizer.
Theresa McDermott, Scotland
Theresa is a solidarity worker from Scotland. She is traveling to Gaza to do long-term human rights monitoring.
Cynthia McKinney, US
Cynthia McKinney is an outspoken advocate for human rights and social justice issues, as well as a=2 0former U.S. congressperson and presidential candidate.
Adnan Mormesh, UK
Adnan is a solidarity worker from Britain. He is traveling to Gaza to do long-term human rights monitoring.
Adam Qvist, Denmark
Adam is a solidarity worker from Denmark. He is traveling to Gaza to do human rights monitoring.
Adam Shapiro, US
Adam is an American documentary film maker and human rights activist.
Kathy Sheetz, US
Kathy is a nurse and film maker, traveling to Gaza to do human rights monitoring.
30 June 2009
For more information contact:
Greta Berlin (English)
tel: +357 99 081 767 / friends@freegaza.org
Caoimhe Butterly (Arabic/English/Spanish):
tel: +357 99 077 820 / sahara78@hotmail.co.uk
www.FreeGaza.org
[23 miles off the coast of Gaza, 15:30pm] - Today Israeli Occupation Forces attacked and boarded the Free Gaza Movement boat, the SPIRIT OF HUMANITY, abducting 21 human rights workers from 11 countries, including Noble laureate Mairead Maguire and former U.S. Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney (see below for a complete list of passengers). The passengers and crew are being forcibly dragged toward Israel.
“This is an outrageous violation of international law against us. Our boat was not in Israeli waters, and we were on a human rights mission to the Gaza Strip,” said Cynthia McKinney, a former U.S. Congresswoman and presidential candidate. “President Obama just told Israel to let in humanitarian and reconstruction supplies, and that’s exactly what we tried to do. We're asking the international community to demand our release so we can resume our journey.”
According to an International Committee of the Red Cross report released yesterday, the Palestinians living in Gaza are “trapped in despair.” Thousands of Gazans whose homes were destroyed earlier during Israel’s December/January massacre are still without shelter despite pledges of almost $4.5 billion in aid, because Israel refuses to allow cement and other building material into the Gaza Strip. The report also notes that hospitals are struggling to meet the needs of their patients due to Israel’s disruption of medical supplies.
“The aid we were carrying is a symbol of hope for the people of Gaza, hope that the sea route would open for them, and they would be able to transport their own materials to begin to reconstruct the schools, hospitals and thousands of homes destroyed during the onslaught of "Cast Lead”. Our mission is a gesture to the people of Gaza that we stand by them and that they are not alone" said fellow passenger Mairead Maguire, winner of a Noble Peace Prize for her work in Northern Ireland.
Just before being kidnapped by Israel, Huwaida Arraf, Free Gaza Movement chairperson and delegation co-coordinator on this voyage, stated that: “No one could possibly believe that our small boat constitutes any sort of threat to Israel. We carry medical and reconstruction supplies, and children’s toys. Our passengers include a Nobel peace prize laureate and a former U.S. congressperson. Our boat was searched and received a security clearance by Cypriot Port Authorities before we departed, and at no time did we ever approach Israeli waters.”
0A
Arraf continued, “Israel’s deliberate and premeditated attack on our unarmed boat is a clear violation of international law and we demand our immediate and unconditional release.”
###
WHAT YOU CAN DO!
CONTACT the Israeli Ministry of Justice
tel: +972 2646 6666 or +972 2646 6340
fax: +972 2646 6357
CONTACT the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs
tel: +972 2530 3111
fax: +972 2530 3367
CONTACT Mark Regev in the Prime Minister's office at:
tel: +972 5 0620 3264 or +972 2670 5354
mark.regev@it.pmo.gov.il
CONTACT the International Committee of the Red Cross to ask for their assistance in establishing the wellbeing of the kidnapped human rights workers and help in securing their immediate release!
Red Cross Israel
tel: +972 3524 5286
fax: +972 3527 0370
tel_aviv.tel@icrc.org
Red Cross Switzerland:
tel: +41 22 730 3443
fax: +41 22 734 8280
Red Cross USA:
tel: +1 212 599 6021
fax: +1 212 599 6009
###
Kidnapped Passengers from the Spirit of Humanity include:
Khalad Abdelkader, Bahrain
Khalad is an engineer representing the Islamic Charitable Association of Bahrain.
Othman Abufalah, Jordan
Othman is a world-renowned journalist with al-Jazeera TV.
Khaled Al-Shenoo, Bahrain
Khaled is a lecturer with the University of Bahrain.
Mansour Al-Abi, Yemen
Mansour is a cameraman with Al-Jazeera TV.
Fatima Al-Attawi, Bahrain
Fatima is a relief=2 0worker and community activist from Bahrain.
Juhaina Alqaed, Bahrain
Juhaina is a journalist & human rights activist.
Huwaida Arraf, US
Huwaida is the Chair of the Free Gaza Movement and delegation co-coordinator for this voyage.
Ishmahil Blagrove, UK
Ishmahil is a Jamaican-born journalist, documentary film maker and founder of the Rice & Peas film production company. His documentaries focus on international struggles for social justice.
Kaltham Ghloom, Bahrain
Kaltham is a community activist.
Derek Graham, Ireland
Derek Graham is an electrician, Free Gaza organizer, and first mate aboard the Spirit of Humanity.
Alex Harrison, UK
Alex is a solidarity worker from Britain. She is traveling to Gaza to do long-term human rights monitoring.
Denis Healey, UK
Denis is Captain of the Spirit of Humanity. This will be his fifth voyage to Gaza.
Fathi Jaouadi, UK
Fathi is a British journalist, Free Gaza organizer, and delegation co-coordinator for this voyage.
Mairead Maguire, Ireland
Mairead is a Nobel laureate and renowned peace activist.
Lubna Masarwa, Palestine/Israel
Lubna is a Palestinian human rights activist and Free Gaza organizer.
Theresa McDermott, Scotland
Theresa is a solidarity worker from Scotland. She is traveling to Gaza to do long-term human rights monitoring.
Cynthia McKinney, US
Cynthia McKinney is an outspoken advocate for human rights and social justice issues, as well as a=2 0former U.S. congressperson and presidential candidate.
Adnan Mormesh, UK
Adnan is a solidarity worker from Britain. He is traveling to Gaza to do long-term human rights monitoring.
Adam Qvist, Denmark
Adam is a solidarity worker from Denmark. He is traveling to Gaza to do human rights monitoring.
Adam Shapiro, US
Adam is an American documentary film maker and human rights activist.
Kathy Sheetz, US
Kathy is a nurse and film maker, traveling to Gaza to do human rights monitoring.
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Joyce Chediac - On Obama's speech in Cairo
On June 4 U.S. President Barack Hussein Obama gave a much-heralded speech addressed to the Muslim world in Cairo, Egypt. The commentary below is based on a comment Chediac, a Lebanese-American, made at a June 5 Workers World Forum in New York City.
Obama made a speech. It was called “bold” and “tough on Israel” because it called for no new Israeli settlements in the West Bank. But Israel does not have to start new settlements to continue the strangulation of the West Bank. It merely has to expand the huge high-rise settlements ringing East Jerusalem, which have virtually sealed off the West Bank. And many of these are not even considered settlements anymore, so their expansion is not even monitored.
Obama made a speech. It was hailed as “evenhanded” because for the first time a U.S. president mentioned the word “Palestine,” and said Palestinians have a right to a state. But he called on Palestinians defending their right to a state, and on Hamas by name, to “renounce violence” while never calling on Israelis to renounce violence and the more than 60 years of state terrorism Israel has perpetrated against the Palestinian people, made possible with U.S. aid and U.S. weapons.
Obama made a speech, which will surely lead to another round of peace talks. Since talks began in 2000, they have been used by Israel not to bring peace, but as a cover for unprecedented violence against the Palestinian people in the West Bank and Gaza. In the name of peace Israel has been building the apartheid wall, riddled the West Bank with checkpoints, demolished homes and stolen land, tortured and arrested youth so that the West Bank is now one big jail. Meanwhile, Gaza is under siege.
The time for such talks is long past. Action is needed to give the Palestinians some relief. But Obama did not take action. He did not demand disassembling the apartheid wall on the West Bank. He did not demand lifting the siege of Gaza, where 10 percent of Gaza’s children are now growth-stunted from the long-term effects of malnutrition. Instead, Obama made a speech.
Obama made a speech that was much heralded in the U.S. media, but U.S. troops are still in Iraq and Afghanistan, and U.S. drone planes are still bombing Pakistani villages.
Obama made a speech, but the Sixth Fleet is still in the Mediterranean Sea; U.S. bases are still in Egypt, Israel, the Gulf States and the Indian Ocean. U.S. bases in Europe are still within striking distance of the Middle East.
Obama made a speech but the U.S. Navy still has a huge nuclear-armed armada in the Persian Gulf, with guns aimed at Iran. It is well known that the U.S. military threatens the Middle East in order to keep Middle Eastern oil in Wall Street’s hands. Yet Obama’s speech, which was called “insightful,” never once mentioned “oil.”
Obama made a speech in Cairo, the largest city in Africa. In order for Obama to make his speech there, the largest security force in the history of Egypt was assembled. The people of Cairo were confined to their homes and told to keep their windows shuttered. In order for Obama to make his speech, a city of 7.5 million was put on lockdown.
Obama said, “No government should be imposed by one nation on another,” and praised democracy. Yet Obama pointedly criticized Hamas, voted into office in a Palestinian election which Jimmy Carter and other observers called one the best examples of participatory democracy in the world. But Obama had no words of criticism for U.S. ally Hosni Mubarak, Egypt’s head of state, who severely represses all political opposition, and is about to run in an election where he will once again be virtually unopposed.
Obama spoke in Egypt, the second largest recipient of U.S. aid. But Obama did not address the plight of the Egyptian people who, despite this influx of aid, have been steadily impoverished since their government came into the U.S. orbit.
Today, 70 percent of the Egyptian diet is bread. Over a million people live in Cairo’s cemeteries because there is no housing. Two years ago, one in five Egyptians couldn’t meet their basic living needs (Reuters, Oct. 17). Conditions now are surely worse as millions of Egyptians who worked abroad and sent money to families at home have lost their jobs due to the worldwide economic crisis begun on Wall Street. Obama certainly did not say that Egypt’s relationship with the U.S. has brought its people only poverty and desperation.
Obama made a speech. But nothing changed.
The fundamental relationship between the U.S. government and the Muslim and other people of that region remains one of exploiter and exploited. Despite Obama’s speech, U.S. imperialism still has nothing to offer working people in the Middle East, and only seeks to take more from them. It is truer today than ever that any gains made by Muslim and other oppressed peoples are won by their own independent struggles, and the solidarity they win from progressives abroad.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Articles copyright 1995-2009 Workers World. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011
Email: ww@workers.org
Subscribe wwnews-subscribe@workersworld.net
Support independent news http://www.workers.org/orders/donate.php
http://www.workers.org/2009/world/cairo_0618/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Addenedum Saturday, June 28, 2009:
I was a member of Workers World for many years. I cannot say just when I joined because there was no application or acceptance process. One fine day I was referred to as "comrade" during a meeting, I did not object to that, I continued being active with the group and so I was a member, I suppose. Around 1980 I had some disagreements with them. I have to say that for the most part I was on the wrong side of things because I was really still much more Jewish than one can be and still be a real internationalist and communist, though I did not realize this. Anyhow, I also had a valid dispute, which was over their connection with Mr. Ramsey Clark. Now, I know that Clark is taken to task for his connection with Workers World. I look at it from the reverse side of the mirror. Clark was, lest we forget, Lyndon B. Johnson's Attorney General, that is to say, chief law enforcement officer of the United States during a time when the Black Panther Party was under sustained and coordinated attack nationwide, he was nominally at least J. Edgar Hoover's boss when Hoover was harassing Martin Luther King, Jr., and he went public to say that there was no conspiracy responsible for murdering King. As chief law enforcement officer when he said that this was not just an opinion he held, it was the official line of a war criminal regime.
Clark was Attorney General, just as Johnson was President, due to the assasination of John F. Kennedy, ie, he benefited from it.
Later Clark ran in the New York Democratic primary against Bella Abzug, who was at least unconditionally anti Vietnam war and against Patrick Moynihan, a Vietnam war supporter. He played "moderate" as being between two "extremes" (pro war criminal Moynihan on one extreme, not pro war criminal Abzug on the other extreme.) Probably due to his intervention Abzug was beat by Moynihan and we had one more pro Vietnam War Senator, one less anti Vietnam War Senator. So, I always held that it was not Clark who had to answer for being associated with Workers World, but rather They who had to answer for their association with him, as there never was an open, public renunciation of his past which, I forget to add, had included locking up young men who resisted being sent to murder in Vietnam.
Okay back to Joyce's piece here.
Worker's World has held the position that Israel functions as a US tool and that it advances US interests in the Middle East and in other places as well. While they do not beat the drum about it, they oppose "anti-semitism" and have said that "Israel is a deathtrap for the Jewish people," that is to say Israel is "bad for the Jews." Now it's true that at the end of WWII a lot of Jews in Europe wanted to go to the US, Canada, Australia, South Africa and not to the semi-arid Arab country of Palestine, and that there were limits on Jewish immigration to these places and so many Jews may have "ended up" in Palestine against their desires. Overall though, Jews were pro-zionist and this pro-zionism penetrated from the Communist movement all the way to mainstream US politics.
Now, one can make a case that during its confrontation with the USSR the US had a useful ally in Israel (one can also make a contrary case but I'll not try to settle that here and now). It is just about impossible though to make a case today that Israel serves US interests. There could be some inertia in a change of US policy but the USSR left the building quite a few years ago, and it has to be realized that the policy of unstinting support for Israel still lingers on. Obama's "attack" is really mild, his outreach to Islam is really limited, and Israel still is the ruler of the US Congress. In the mainstream media one finds criticism of Israel for instance on MSNBC (Rachel Maddow comes to mind) but this criticism is not of Israel itself. The Jews Only State is established on other people's land against their will. There is no mainstream criticism of the notion that Israel must always be a "Jews Only State" even though the number of non-Jews in Israhell continue to grow faster than the numbers of Jews, not even counting the Palestinians on the West Bank, in Jerusalem and in Gaza. In pre 1967 Israel (so-called "Israel proper") around a third of people under five years old are not Jewish. If you count in "the occupied territories" Jews are already a minority! How can there be a State there that gives Jews special rights and deprives all others of full participation and full citizenship?
Jews in the US and West are overall a privileged group (there are exceptions to every rule of course) and they are very highly represented among the elites in most important fields from "revolutionary politics" and trade union leaderships to Bilderberg. Their status comes in part from their mass rejection of communism that followed WWII (no longer so important) and Israel's "good guy" status in the Western world. Mix in the awe that the "chosen by God people" the "ever suffering people" the "most persecuted victims" people mythologies endow and you get what you have.
The US could procure oil and gas without Israel. It could advance its interests probably more easily were it not encumbered with the Israeli albatross. So I think people like Joyce should ask if the tail is wagging the dog. I think it is.
Obama made a speech. It was called “bold” and “tough on Israel” because it called for no new Israeli settlements in the West Bank. But Israel does not have to start new settlements to continue the strangulation of the West Bank. It merely has to expand the huge high-rise settlements ringing East Jerusalem, which have virtually sealed off the West Bank. And many of these are not even considered settlements anymore, so their expansion is not even monitored.
Obama made a speech. It was hailed as “evenhanded” because for the first time a U.S. president mentioned the word “Palestine,” and said Palestinians have a right to a state. But he called on Palestinians defending their right to a state, and on Hamas by name, to “renounce violence” while never calling on Israelis to renounce violence and the more than 60 years of state terrorism Israel has perpetrated against the Palestinian people, made possible with U.S. aid and U.S. weapons.
Obama made a speech, which will surely lead to another round of peace talks. Since talks began in 2000, they have been used by Israel not to bring peace, but as a cover for unprecedented violence against the Palestinian people in the West Bank and Gaza. In the name of peace Israel has been building the apartheid wall, riddled the West Bank with checkpoints, demolished homes and stolen land, tortured and arrested youth so that the West Bank is now one big jail. Meanwhile, Gaza is under siege.
The time for such talks is long past. Action is needed to give the Palestinians some relief. But Obama did not take action. He did not demand disassembling the apartheid wall on the West Bank. He did not demand lifting the siege of Gaza, where 10 percent of Gaza’s children are now growth-stunted from the long-term effects of malnutrition. Instead, Obama made a speech.
Obama made a speech that was much heralded in the U.S. media, but U.S. troops are still in Iraq and Afghanistan, and U.S. drone planes are still bombing Pakistani villages.
Obama made a speech, but the Sixth Fleet is still in the Mediterranean Sea; U.S. bases are still in Egypt, Israel, the Gulf States and the Indian Ocean. U.S. bases in Europe are still within striking distance of the Middle East.
Obama made a speech but the U.S. Navy still has a huge nuclear-armed armada in the Persian Gulf, with guns aimed at Iran. It is well known that the U.S. military threatens the Middle East in order to keep Middle Eastern oil in Wall Street’s hands. Yet Obama’s speech, which was called “insightful,” never once mentioned “oil.”
Obama made a speech in Cairo, the largest city in Africa. In order for Obama to make his speech there, the largest security force in the history of Egypt was assembled. The people of Cairo were confined to their homes and told to keep their windows shuttered. In order for Obama to make his speech, a city of 7.5 million was put on lockdown.
Obama said, “No government should be imposed by one nation on another,” and praised democracy. Yet Obama pointedly criticized Hamas, voted into office in a Palestinian election which Jimmy Carter and other observers called one the best examples of participatory democracy in the world. But Obama had no words of criticism for U.S. ally Hosni Mubarak, Egypt’s head of state, who severely represses all political opposition, and is about to run in an election where he will once again be virtually unopposed.
Obama spoke in Egypt, the second largest recipient of U.S. aid. But Obama did not address the plight of the Egyptian people who, despite this influx of aid, have been steadily impoverished since their government came into the U.S. orbit.
Today, 70 percent of the Egyptian diet is bread. Over a million people live in Cairo’s cemeteries because there is no housing. Two years ago, one in five Egyptians couldn’t meet their basic living needs (Reuters, Oct. 17). Conditions now are surely worse as millions of Egyptians who worked abroad and sent money to families at home have lost their jobs due to the worldwide economic crisis begun on Wall Street. Obama certainly did not say that Egypt’s relationship with the U.S. has brought its people only poverty and desperation.
Obama made a speech. But nothing changed.
The fundamental relationship between the U.S. government and the Muslim and other people of that region remains one of exploiter and exploited. Despite Obama’s speech, U.S. imperialism still has nothing to offer working people in the Middle East, and only seeks to take more from them. It is truer today than ever that any gains made by Muslim and other oppressed peoples are won by their own independent struggles, and the solidarity they win from progressives abroad.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Articles copyright 1995-2009 Workers World. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011
Email: ww@workers.org
Subscribe wwnews-subscribe@workersworld.net
Support independent news http://www.workers.org/orders/donate.php
http://www.workers.org/2009/world/cairo_0618/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Addenedum Saturday, June 28, 2009:
I was a member of Workers World for many years. I cannot say just when I joined because there was no application or acceptance process. One fine day I was referred to as "comrade" during a meeting, I did not object to that, I continued being active with the group and so I was a member, I suppose. Around 1980 I had some disagreements with them. I have to say that for the most part I was on the wrong side of things because I was really still much more Jewish than one can be and still be a real internationalist and communist, though I did not realize this. Anyhow, I also had a valid dispute, which was over their connection with Mr. Ramsey Clark. Now, I know that Clark is taken to task for his connection with Workers World. I look at it from the reverse side of the mirror. Clark was, lest we forget, Lyndon B. Johnson's Attorney General, that is to say, chief law enforcement officer of the United States during a time when the Black Panther Party was under sustained and coordinated attack nationwide, he was nominally at least J. Edgar Hoover's boss when Hoover was harassing Martin Luther King, Jr., and he went public to say that there was no conspiracy responsible for murdering King. As chief law enforcement officer when he said that this was not just an opinion he held, it was the official line of a war criminal regime.
Clark was Attorney General, just as Johnson was President, due to the assasination of John F. Kennedy, ie, he benefited from it.
Later Clark ran in the New York Democratic primary against Bella Abzug, who was at least unconditionally anti Vietnam war and against Patrick Moynihan, a Vietnam war supporter. He played "moderate" as being between two "extremes" (pro war criminal Moynihan on one extreme, not pro war criminal Abzug on the other extreme.) Probably due to his intervention Abzug was beat by Moynihan and we had one more pro Vietnam War Senator, one less anti Vietnam War Senator. So, I always held that it was not Clark who had to answer for being associated with Workers World, but rather They who had to answer for their association with him, as there never was an open, public renunciation of his past which, I forget to add, had included locking up young men who resisted being sent to murder in Vietnam.
Okay back to Joyce's piece here.
Worker's World has held the position that Israel functions as a US tool and that it advances US interests in the Middle East and in other places as well. While they do not beat the drum about it, they oppose "anti-semitism" and have said that "Israel is a deathtrap for the Jewish people," that is to say Israel is "bad for the Jews." Now it's true that at the end of WWII a lot of Jews in Europe wanted to go to the US, Canada, Australia, South Africa and not to the semi-arid Arab country of Palestine, and that there were limits on Jewish immigration to these places and so many Jews may have "ended up" in Palestine against their desires. Overall though, Jews were pro-zionist and this pro-zionism penetrated from the Communist movement all the way to mainstream US politics.
Now, one can make a case that during its confrontation with the USSR the US had a useful ally in Israel (one can also make a contrary case but I'll not try to settle that here and now). It is just about impossible though to make a case today that Israel serves US interests. There could be some inertia in a change of US policy but the USSR left the building quite a few years ago, and it has to be realized that the policy of unstinting support for Israel still lingers on. Obama's "attack" is really mild, his outreach to Islam is really limited, and Israel still is the ruler of the US Congress. In the mainstream media one finds criticism of Israel for instance on MSNBC (Rachel Maddow comes to mind) but this criticism is not of Israel itself. The Jews Only State is established on other people's land against their will. There is no mainstream criticism of the notion that Israel must always be a "Jews Only State" even though the number of non-Jews in Israhell continue to grow faster than the numbers of Jews, not even counting the Palestinians on the West Bank, in Jerusalem and in Gaza. In pre 1967 Israel (so-called "Israel proper") around a third of people under five years old are not Jewish. If you count in "the occupied territories" Jews are already a minority! How can there be a State there that gives Jews special rights and deprives all others of full participation and full citizenship?
Jews in the US and West are overall a privileged group (there are exceptions to every rule of course) and they are very highly represented among the elites in most important fields from "revolutionary politics" and trade union leaderships to Bilderberg. Their status comes in part from their mass rejection of communism that followed WWII (no longer so important) and Israel's "good guy" status in the Western world. Mix in the awe that the "chosen by God people" the "ever suffering people" the "most persecuted victims" people mythologies endow and you get what you have.
The US could procure oil and gas without Israel. It could advance its interests probably more easily were it not encumbered with the Israeli albatross. So I think people like Joyce should ask if the tail is wagging the dog. I think it is.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Lusitania Truthers Vindicated, Ship was secretly carring ammo and was a valid war target.
tidal vortices, 
Jun 23, 2009
The article "Lusitania's Secret Cargo" in the Jan/Feb 2009 Archaeology Magazine appears to have vindicated the Lusitania “Truthers” .
The article states:
“The nearly century-old debate about whether the passenger liner Lusitania was transporting British war munitions when torpedoed by a German U-boat is over. Physical evidence of just such a cargo has been recovered from the wreck, which rests 12 miles off the Irish coast in 300 ft. of murky turbulent water.
“Lusitania was sunk off County Cork on May 7, 1915. The attack killed 1,198 people, including 128 Americans and helped push the United States into WWI. Ever since the ship went down, there have been suspicions [by conspiracy theorists known as 'the Lusitania truthers' (ed.)] that the Lusitania was carrying live munitions. Under the rules of war, that would have made the liner a legitimate target, as the Germans maintained at the time. "The British government has always been evasive about the presence of munitions on Lusitania. Two cargo manifests were submitted; the second, filed after the Lusitania sailed indicated there were light munitions on board. Some believe the ship was carrying much more, however, and that the British Navy attempted to destroy the wreck in the 1950s to conceal its military cargo.”
Now a team led by County Waterford-based diver Eoin McGarry, on behalf of Lusitania's American owner, Gregg Bemis, has recovered live ammunition from the wreck ... This past September, Bemis's team used a remotely operated vehicle to penetrate the wreck. They were able to clearly identify a vast amount of ammunition in an area of the Lusitania not believed to have carried cargo. The Remington .303 caliber bullets the team discovered on the ship had been used by the British Military during WWI. Ten of the bullets were brought to the surface. “‘The charge that the Lusitania was carrying war materiel is valid,’ says Bemis. ‘She was a legitimate target for the German submarine.’”
However, the official explanation of events contradicts the conspiracy theorists, and is supported by a study conducted by the government agency, Government Incompetence of Scientific Technology (GIST), after a 90-plus-year, 125-billion-dollar investigation. While GIST acknowledges that “vast quantities” of .303 ammunition may have been found, authors of the GIST study flatly deny that the ammo was in the Lusitania’s hold prior to its sinking, or that it came from America, a neutral country at the time. Using sophisticated computer models, the details of which are classified, GIST scientists have clearly demonstrated that the Remington bullets found were merely random live rounds accidentally dropped by WWI soldiers in the battlefields of Europe. Those dropped bullets then washed into streams and rivers that eventually were carried into the ocean, where they coalesced into a tidy pile inside the ship's hold by a drifting phenomenon called "Tidal Expansion," without causing any harm to the adjacent cargo.
Moreover, in order for the "twoofers" allegations to be true, it has been suggested that to carry out a sophisticated American-British ammo transport operation, with all the buy/sell ordering paperwork, the manufacturing, the hauling to the shipyard, unloading, storage, then re-loading into the ship's hold all that ammunition, would have involved thousands of people. Of course some would have talked, and it would have been impossible for the US or British government to keep such a secret for so many years.
In addition, it's well known that the US and British governments would never even consider such a thing. As GIST lead investigator, Dr. Siam Blunder, has stated, "Why would they take a chance placing their own citizens in harm's way?" Dr. Blunder added that they also investigated the possibility of a terrorist German group planting the ammo in the cargo hold prior to the New York departure. However, it was dismissed as "an absurd insinuation," since American security forces were at the shipyards, making it impossible for anyone, let alone the terrorists, to obtain the necessary access to load the ammo undetected.
GIST senior engineer, Mr. Gross Johnson, continued, “If the ammunition was truly in the hold before the sinking, it would have fallen to the ocean bottom at almost free-flotsam speed, crushing the ammunition in the process. The fact that the divers found the ammunition intact and not crushed is definitive proof that the ammo simply eroded into the neat piles due to the naturally occurring 'Tidal Expansion' process.”
GIST held a public hearing on its preliminary findings, generously allowing the public almost three weeks to review and comment on its 347,911-page Executive Summary of the full report. The hearing was sparsely attended by only a few surviving truthers, and of course some “fair and balanced” media.
GIST was asked by one old truther about the probability of the ammunition packing itself into the wreckage of the Lusitania, in view of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Dr. Blunder responded that due to limited funding and only 92 years to conduct the investigation, GIST didn't have time to go into the actual transfer mechanism of the ammunition, as its prime focus was on the tidal vortices around the 79th link of the ship's anchor chain that triggered the “chain” reaction of tidal expansion.
As a result of the GIST findings, significant code changes and stiffer regulations for the storage, transport and ownership of ammunition by Americans are in the final stages of review.
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4DMUS_enUS271US272&q=lusitania+was+carrying+ammunition
Jun 23, 2009
The article "Lusitania's Secret Cargo" in the Jan/Feb 2009 Archaeology Magazine appears to have vindicated the Lusitania “Truthers” .
The article states:
“The nearly century-old debate about whether the passenger liner Lusitania was transporting British war munitions when torpedoed by a German U-boat is over. Physical evidence of just such a cargo has been recovered from the wreck, which rests 12 miles off the Irish coast in 300 ft. of murky turbulent water.
“Lusitania was sunk off County Cork on May 7, 1915. The attack killed 1,198 people, including 128 Americans and helped push the United States into WWI. Ever since the ship went down, there have been suspicions [by conspiracy theorists known as 'the Lusitania truthers' (ed.)] that the Lusitania was carrying live munitions. Under the rules of war, that would have made the liner a legitimate target, as the Germans maintained at the time. "The British government has always been evasive about the presence of munitions on Lusitania. Two cargo manifests were submitted; the second, filed after the Lusitania sailed indicated there were light munitions on board. Some believe the ship was carrying much more, however, and that the British Navy attempted to destroy the wreck in the 1950s to conceal its military cargo.”
Now a team led by County Waterford-based diver Eoin McGarry, on behalf of Lusitania's American owner, Gregg Bemis, has recovered live ammunition from the wreck ... This past September, Bemis's team used a remotely operated vehicle to penetrate the wreck. They were able to clearly identify a vast amount of ammunition in an area of the Lusitania not believed to have carried cargo. The Remington .303 caliber bullets the team discovered on the ship had been used by the British Military during WWI. Ten of the bullets were brought to the surface. “‘The charge that the Lusitania was carrying war materiel is valid,’ says Bemis. ‘She was a legitimate target for the German submarine.’”
However, the official explanation of events contradicts the conspiracy theorists, and is supported by a study conducted by the government agency, Government Incompetence of Scientific Technology (GIST), after a 90-plus-year, 125-billion-dollar investigation. While GIST acknowledges that “vast quantities” of .303 ammunition may have been found, authors of the GIST study flatly deny that the ammo was in the Lusitania’s hold prior to its sinking, or that it came from America, a neutral country at the time. Using sophisticated computer models, the details of which are classified, GIST scientists have clearly demonstrated that the Remington bullets found were merely random live rounds accidentally dropped by WWI soldiers in the battlefields of Europe. Those dropped bullets then washed into streams and rivers that eventually were carried into the ocean, where they coalesced into a tidy pile inside the ship's hold by a drifting phenomenon called "Tidal Expansion," without causing any harm to the adjacent cargo.
Moreover, in order for the "twoofers" allegations to be true, it has been suggested that to carry out a sophisticated American-British ammo transport operation, with all the buy/sell ordering paperwork, the manufacturing, the hauling to the shipyard, unloading, storage, then re-loading into the ship's hold all that ammunition, would have involved thousands of people. Of course some would have talked, and it would have been impossible for the US or British government to keep such a secret for so many years.
In addition, it's well known that the US and British governments would never even consider such a thing. As GIST lead investigator, Dr. Siam Blunder, has stated, "Why would they take a chance placing their own citizens in harm's way?" Dr. Blunder added that they also investigated the possibility of a terrorist German group planting the ammo in the cargo hold prior to the New York departure. However, it was dismissed as "an absurd insinuation," since American security forces were at the shipyards, making it impossible for anyone, let alone the terrorists, to obtain the necessary access to load the ammo undetected.
GIST senior engineer, Mr. Gross Johnson, continued, “If the ammunition was truly in the hold before the sinking, it would have fallen to the ocean bottom at almost free-flotsam speed, crushing the ammunition in the process. The fact that the divers found the ammunition intact and not crushed is definitive proof that the ammo simply eroded into the neat piles due to the naturally occurring 'Tidal Expansion' process.”
GIST held a public hearing on its preliminary findings, generously allowing the public almost three weeks to review and comment on its 347,911-page Executive Summary of the full report. The hearing was sparsely attended by only a few surviving truthers, and of course some “fair and balanced” media.
GIST was asked by one old truther about the probability of the ammunition packing itself into the wreckage of the Lusitania, in view of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Dr. Blunder responded that due to limited funding and only 92 years to conduct the investigation, GIST didn't have time to go into the actual transfer mechanism of the ammunition, as its prime focus was on the tidal vortices around the 79th link of the ship's anchor chain that triggered the “chain” reaction of tidal expansion.
As a result of the GIST findings, significant code changes and stiffer regulations for the storage, transport and ownership of ammunition by Americans are in the final stages of review.
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4DMUS_enUS271US272&q=lusitania+was+carrying+ammunition
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
The End of Free Speech?
May 7, 2009
The End of Free Speech?
Criminalizing Criticism of Israel
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
On October 16, 2004, President George W. Bush signed the Israel Lobby’s bill, the Global Anti-Semitism Review Act. This legislation requires the US Department of State to monitor anti-semitism world wide.
To monitor anti-semitism, it has to be defined. What is the definition? Basically, as defined by the Israel Lobby and Abe Foxman, it boils down to any criticism of Israel or Jews.
Rahm Israel Emanuel hasn’t been mopping floors at the White House.
As soon as he gets the Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009 passed, it will become a crime for any American to tell the truth about Israel’s treatment of Palestinians and theft of their lands.
It will be a crime for Christians to acknowledge the New Testament’s account of Jews demanding the crucifixion of Jesus.
It will be a crime to report the extraordinary influence of the Israel Lobby on the White House and Congress, such as the AIPAC-written resolutions praising Israel for its war crimes against the Palestinians in Gaza that were endorsed by 100 per cent of the US Senate and 99 per cent of the House of Representatives, while the rest of the world condemned Israel for its barbarity.
It will be a crime to doubt the Holocaust.
It will become a crime to note the disproportionate representation of Jews in the media, finance, and foreign policy.
In other words, it means the end of free speech, free inquiry, and the First Amendment to the Constitution. Any facts or truths that cast aspersion upon Israel will simply be banned.
Given the hubris of the US government, which leads Washington to apply US law to every country and organization, what will happen to the International Red Cross, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, and the various human rights organizations that have demanded investigations of Israel’s military assault on Gaza’s civilian population? Will they all be arrested for the hate crime of “excessive” criticism of Israel?
This is a serious question.
A recent UN report, which is yet to be released in its entirety, blames Israel for the deaths and injuries that occurred within the United Nations premises in Gaza. The Israeli government has responded by charging that the UN report is “tendentious, patently biased,” which puts the UN report into the State Department’s category of excessive criticism and strong anti-Israel sentiment.
Israel is getting away with its blatant use of the American government to silence its critics despite the fact that the Israeli press and Israeli soldiers have exposed the Israeli atrocities in Gaza and the premeditated murder of women and children urged upon the Israeli invaders by rabbis. These acts are clearly war crimes.
It was the Israeli press that published the pictures of the Israeli soldiers’ T-shirts that indicate that the willful murder of women and children is now the culture of the Israeli army. The T-shirts are horrific expressions of barbarity. For example, one shows a pregnant Palestinian woman with a crosshairs over her stomach and the slogan, “One shot, two kills.” These T-shirts are an indication that Israel’s policy toward the Palestinians is one of extermination.
It has been true for years that the most potent criticism of Israel’s mistreatment of the Palestinians comes from the Israeli press and Israeli peace groups. For example, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz and Jeff Halper of ICAHD have shown a moral conscience that apparently does not exist in the Western democracies where Israel’s crimes are covered up and even praised.
Will the American hate crime bill be applied to Haaretz and Jeff Halper? Will American commentators who say nothing themselves but simply report what Haaretz and Halper have said be arrested for “spreading hatred of Israel, an anti-semitic act”?
Many Americans have been brainwashed by the propaganda that Palestinians are terrorists who threaten innocent Israel. These Americans will see the censorship as merely part of the necessary war on terror. They will accept the demonization of fellow citizens who report unpalatable facts about Israel and agree that such people should be punished for aiding and abetting terrorists.
A massive push is underway to criminalize criticism of Israel. American university professors have fallen victim to the well organized attempt to eliminate all criticism of Israel. Norman Finkelstein was denied tenure at a Catholic university because of the power of the Israel Lobby. Now the Israel Lobby is after University of California (at Santa Barbara,) professor Wiliam Robinson. Robinson’s crime: his course on global affairs included some reading assignments critical of Israel’s invasion of Gaza.
The Israel Lobby apparently succeeded in convincing the Obama Justice (sic) Department that it is anti-semitic to accuse two Jewish AIPAC officials, Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman, of spying. The Israel Lobby succeeded in getting their trial delayed for four years, and now Attorney General Eric Holder has dropped charges. Yet, Larry Franklin, the DOD official accused of giving secret material to Rosen and Weissman, is serving 12 years and 7 months in prison.
The absurdity is extraordinary. The two Israeli agents are not guilty of receiving secrets, but the American official is guilty of giving secrets to them! If there is no spy in the story, how was Franklin convicted of giving secrets to a spy?
Criminalizing criticism of Israel destroys any hope of America having an independent foreign policy in the Middle East that serves American rather than Israeli interests. It eliminates any prospect of Americans escaping from their enculturation with Israeli propaganda.
To keep American minds captive, the Lobby is working to ban as anti-semitic any truth or disagreeable fact that pertains to Israel. It is permissible to criticize every other country in the world, but it is anti-semitic to criticize Israel, and anti-semitism will soon be a universal hate-crime in the Western world.
Most of Europe has already criminalized doubting the Holocaust. It is a crime even to confirm that it happened but to conclude that less than 6 million Jews were murdered.
Why is the Holocaust a subject that is off limits to examination? How could a case buttressed by hard facts possibly be endangered by kooks and anti-semitics? Surely the case doesn’t need to be protected by thought control.
Imprisoning people for doubts is the antithesis of modernity.
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com
The End of Free Speech?
Criminalizing Criticism of Israel
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
On October 16, 2004, President George W. Bush signed the Israel Lobby’s bill, the Global Anti-Semitism Review Act. This legislation requires the US Department of State to monitor anti-semitism world wide.
To monitor anti-semitism, it has to be defined. What is the definition? Basically, as defined by the Israel Lobby and Abe Foxman, it boils down to any criticism of Israel or Jews.
Rahm Israel Emanuel hasn’t been mopping floors at the White House.
As soon as he gets the Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009 passed, it will become a crime for any American to tell the truth about Israel’s treatment of Palestinians and theft of their lands.
It will be a crime for Christians to acknowledge the New Testament’s account of Jews demanding the crucifixion of Jesus.
It will be a crime to report the extraordinary influence of the Israel Lobby on the White House and Congress, such as the AIPAC-written resolutions praising Israel for its war crimes against the Palestinians in Gaza that were endorsed by 100 per cent of the US Senate and 99 per cent of the House of Representatives, while the rest of the world condemned Israel for its barbarity.
It will be a crime to doubt the Holocaust.
It will become a crime to note the disproportionate representation of Jews in the media, finance, and foreign policy.
In other words, it means the end of free speech, free inquiry, and the First Amendment to the Constitution. Any facts or truths that cast aspersion upon Israel will simply be banned.
Given the hubris of the US government, which leads Washington to apply US law to every country and organization, what will happen to the International Red Cross, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, and the various human rights organizations that have demanded investigations of Israel’s military assault on Gaza’s civilian population? Will they all be arrested for the hate crime of “excessive” criticism of Israel?
This is a serious question.
A recent UN report, which is yet to be released in its entirety, blames Israel for the deaths and injuries that occurred within the United Nations premises in Gaza. The Israeli government has responded by charging that the UN report is “tendentious, patently biased,” which puts the UN report into the State Department’s category of excessive criticism and strong anti-Israel sentiment.
Israel is getting away with its blatant use of the American government to silence its critics despite the fact that the Israeli press and Israeli soldiers have exposed the Israeli atrocities in Gaza and the premeditated murder of women and children urged upon the Israeli invaders by rabbis. These acts are clearly war crimes.
It was the Israeli press that published the pictures of the Israeli soldiers’ T-shirts that indicate that the willful murder of women and children is now the culture of the Israeli army. The T-shirts are horrific expressions of barbarity. For example, one shows a pregnant Palestinian woman with a crosshairs over her stomach and the slogan, “One shot, two kills.” These T-shirts are an indication that Israel’s policy toward the Palestinians is one of extermination.
It has been true for years that the most potent criticism of Israel’s mistreatment of the Palestinians comes from the Israeli press and Israeli peace groups. For example, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz and Jeff Halper of ICAHD have shown a moral conscience that apparently does not exist in the Western democracies where Israel’s crimes are covered up and even praised.
Will the American hate crime bill be applied to Haaretz and Jeff Halper? Will American commentators who say nothing themselves but simply report what Haaretz and Halper have said be arrested for “spreading hatred of Israel, an anti-semitic act”?
Many Americans have been brainwashed by the propaganda that Palestinians are terrorists who threaten innocent Israel. These Americans will see the censorship as merely part of the necessary war on terror. They will accept the demonization of fellow citizens who report unpalatable facts about Israel and agree that such people should be punished for aiding and abetting terrorists.
A massive push is underway to criminalize criticism of Israel. American university professors have fallen victim to the well organized attempt to eliminate all criticism of Israel. Norman Finkelstein was denied tenure at a Catholic university because of the power of the Israel Lobby. Now the Israel Lobby is after University of California (at Santa Barbara,) professor Wiliam Robinson. Robinson’s crime: his course on global affairs included some reading assignments critical of Israel’s invasion of Gaza.
The Israel Lobby apparently succeeded in convincing the Obama Justice (sic) Department that it is anti-semitic to accuse two Jewish AIPAC officials, Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman, of spying. The Israel Lobby succeeded in getting their trial delayed for four years, and now Attorney General Eric Holder has dropped charges. Yet, Larry Franklin, the DOD official accused of giving secret material to Rosen and Weissman, is serving 12 years and 7 months in prison.
The absurdity is extraordinary. The two Israeli agents are not guilty of receiving secrets, but the American official is guilty of giving secrets to them! If there is no spy in the story, how was Franklin convicted of giving secrets to a spy?
Criminalizing criticism of Israel destroys any hope of America having an independent foreign policy in the Middle East that serves American rather than Israeli interests. It eliminates any prospect of Americans escaping from their enculturation with Israeli propaganda.
To keep American minds captive, the Lobby is working to ban as anti-semitic any truth or disagreeable fact that pertains to Israel. It is permissible to criticize every other country in the world, but it is anti-semitic to criticize Israel, and anti-semitism will soon be a universal hate-crime in the Western world.
Most of Europe has already criminalized doubting the Holocaust. It is a crime even to confirm that it happened but to conclude that less than 6 million Jews were murdered.
Why is the Holocaust a subject that is off limits to examination? How could a case buttressed by hard facts possibly be endangered by kooks and anti-semitics? Surely the case doesn’t need to be protected by thought control.
Imprisoning people for doubts is the antithesis of modernity.
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com
Democracy for Iran?
Mr. Ahmadinejad was declared the run away landslide winner (his second 60% plus landslide, as a matter of fact)of the Iranian elections. Oppositionists, who include some of the richest Iranians, object to his "buying off" the poor, and his supposed "anti semitism."
Many of them have gone into the streets of Tehran demanding a "do over" of the election, though they cannot show one "hanging chad", one "black box vote".
Their leader has to be given some credit, though. Imagine Al Gore or John Kerry defying the Supreme Court, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Bilderberg consensus and Ruppert Murdoch in insisting, at the risk of their own lives and liberty, that the elections stolen by the Bush handlers be redone, let alone recounted? And they actually had demonstrable fraud to complain about!
Many of them have gone into the streets of Tehran demanding a "do over" of the election, though they cannot show one "hanging chad", one "black box vote".
Their leader has to be given some credit, though. Imagine Al Gore or John Kerry defying the Supreme Court, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Bilderberg consensus and Ruppert Murdoch in insisting, at the risk of their own lives and liberty, that the elections stolen by the Bush handlers be redone, let alone recounted? And they actually had demonstrable fraud to complain about!
Support the Fully Informed Jury Act
What is FIJA?
Someone asked:
>What is FIJA? I'm due to perform jury duty next week and I would like
>to know a little more about Fully Informed Jury Act is it? In particular
>I heard that juries have a right to find someone innocent if they
>think the law which the defendent is accused of breaking is unjust.
You heard right. It's called jury nullification, and it has been a part of our legal tradition since 1670AD, when 4 jurors refused to convict William Penn for preaching to Quakers. They were imprisoned without sustenance as punishment for failing to uphold the King's Law.
The jurors were freed amidst great uproar on a writ of habeus corpus, and the precedent that jurors cannot be punished for failing to uphold the law has stood the test of time. It was recently upheld in the US in 1972. The Bill of Rights intentionally casts this right in concrete, by guaranteeing trial by jury and by forbidding double jeopardy.
FIJA stands for Fully Informed Jury Association, a nation-wide grassroots organization which is lobbying for statutory acts or amendments to state constitutions which would inform juries of their powers. The wording of a sample statutory act is quite long, and would vary from state to state, but a sample amendment is fairly simple:
"Whenever state or local govt is one of the parties in any trial by jury, the court must inform the jurors that in addition to their responsibility to judge the facts of the case, they have an inherent right to judge the law as itself."
As you may have read elsewhere there is little controversy over the existence of this power. The controversy is over whether jurors should be informed of it. The way it stands in 48 states (but not Ind or Md) is that the judge is allowed to (falsely) inform jurors that they must decide the case based only on the facts, and any appeal by the defense for a not-guilty verdict based on the immorality of the law is grounds for contempt and a mistrial.
It was not always this way. For the first 80 years of the USA, jurors were routinely informed of their power to judge the law as well as the facts, and this is enshrined in several state constitutions as well. Today, only Md and Ind still inform their jurors, however. Court rulings favoring the powers of judges have chipped away at it. You'd think that judges would have had to disqualify themselves from such rulings!
FIJA National has lots of historical information, brochure/handouts, and an excellent newspaper. There is a local FIJA movement in almost all 50 states, as well. Call 406 793-5550 and ask for an info packet, or to find out about your local group.
My favorite thing of theirs is the "True or False" Brochure. At 6 cents each you can get a hundred, and give one to all your friends and neighbors.
It would also be good to get lots of people knowledgable about it, so they can right letters to editors of their local papers.
I recommend the movement highly to anyone who might have ever used the words "liberty and justice for all," and who thought that it stood for something.
Someone asked:
>What is FIJA? I'm due to perform jury duty next week and I would like
>to know a little more about Fully Informed Jury Act is it? In particular
>I heard that juries have a right to find someone innocent if they
>think the law which the defendent is accused of breaking is unjust.
You heard right. It's called jury nullification, and it has been a part of our legal tradition since 1670AD, when 4 jurors refused to convict William Penn for preaching to Quakers. They were imprisoned without sustenance as punishment for failing to uphold the King's Law.
The jurors were freed amidst great uproar on a writ of habeus corpus, and the precedent that jurors cannot be punished for failing to uphold the law has stood the test of time. It was recently upheld in the US in 1972. The Bill of Rights intentionally casts this right in concrete, by guaranteeing trial by jury and by forbidding double jeopardy.
FIJA stands for Fully Informed Jury Association, a nation-wide grassroots organization which is lobbying for statutory acts or amendments to state constitutions which would inform juries of their powers. The wording of a sample statutory act is quite long, and would vary from state to state, but a sample amendment is fairly simple:
"Whenever state or local govt is one of the parties in any trial by jury, the court must inform the jurors that in addition to their responsibility to judge the facts of the case, they have an inherent right to judge the law as itself."
As you may have read elsewhere there is little controversy over the existence of this power. The controversy is over whether jurors should be informed of it. The way it stands in 48 states (but not Ind or Md) is that the judge is allowed to (falsely) inform jurors that they must decide the case based only on the facts, and any appeal by the defense for a not-guilty verdict based on the immorality of the law is grounds for contempt and a mistrial.
It was not always this way. For the first 80 years of the USA, jurors were routinely informed of their power to judge the law as well as the facts, and this is enshrined in several state constitutions as well. Today, only Md and Ind still inform their jurors, however. Court rulings favoring the powers of judges have chipped away at it. You'd think that judges would have had to disqualify themselves from such rulings!
FIJA National has lots of historical information, brochure/handouts, and an excellent newspaper. There is a local FIJA movement in almost all 50 states, as well. Call 406 793-5550 and ask for an info packet, or to find out about your local group.
My favorite thing of theirs is the "True or False" Brochure. At 6 cents each you can get a hundred, and give one to all your friends and neighbors.
It would also be good to get lots of people knowledgable about it, so they can right letters to editors of their local papers.
I recommend the movement highly to anyone who might have ever used the words "liberty and justice for all," and who thought that it stood for something.
Monday, June 22, 2009
Jury Nullification, Me, and Diane Sawyer, and I did my duty at New York State Supreme Court today in Manhattan.
Update Tuesday, June 23.
Today I was on a panel of thirty-five citizens of New York County in a civil case involving a woman construction worker who claims injuries in an alleged slip and fall accident she says was caused by the negligence of the landlord, the construction contractor and I think a subcontractor. I'd like to say for the record I was scared by many of my fellow prospective jurors, their pre disposition to assume this woman, whose case they had not even heard yet must be gaming the system. I'm glad that at least they were forthright enough to spill their guts for the attorneys, though maybe, just maybe some claimed a predisposition because jury duty sucks, it pays $40 a day, with no compensation for travel time, and the lawyers offered an estimate that the case would go for six days.
The jury system is surely broken as it is.
I offered that I thought I could be fair but that I doubted I could honestly take the oath, as I would be swearing to God that I will follow the judge's version of the law, when I know that since the 1670's in common law in the English speaking realms there is an understanding of jury nullification. This got me a get out of jury duty free pass, which is a shame because I could take the six days, given that I'm a pensioner and I could be fair, because as left as I am I would not award someone who was not injured by the fault of others, as this stuff makes it harder for real victims of negligence to find justice and recompense.
Anyhow, maybe some juror will google "jury nullification" and find out what it means. Maybe some lawer will! That would be its own reward.
I got called for jury duty and served my first day today. They showed us prospective jurors a video in which it was claimed that we must follow the judge's instructions, ie. his or her version of what the law says and then simply make a determination of who or what did or did not violate the law. The video cited the case of William Penn, saying he had been arrested and prosecuted for a "disorderly" sermon on a London street. The jurors in the Penn case had been expected to do what the crown wanted them to do, that is to convict Penn. They did not convict, and they were themselves imprisoned.
One of the narrators of the video was Diane Sawyer. Her appearance put me back to the days when I was unhappily granted fifteen minutes of fame while a struggling $25,000 a year caseworker who lived in a seventy-five dollar a week room with shared bathroom and no kitchen privileges in the attic of Marty O'Toole on Sedgwick Avenue in the Bronx. I stopped by a newsstand on my way to my usual breakfast diner and saw a case I was involved in trumpeted across the New york Daily News front page. "Diane Sawyer Stole My Baby." In this case I had been ordered to remove several children from their loving mother who was struggling with drug addiction but had succeeded in providing more than minimal care for them. I followed the orders of my manager who was not intimately involved in the case and had never met the family at all. The removal was to be done as an "emergency removal" prior to a court hearing which would take place the following day. It could be argued that the kids had to be removed temporarily and brought to someplace better but in my first hand opinion, and I had removed dozens of kids, and knew this family, there was no immediate need to take them out before a judge could review the case. In fact juries need to be assembled to sit on these child removal travesties. I had to fight like a tiger to get them placed with their grandmother, although the damage had been done, they were traumatized, I am sure, for life.
The mom accused Sawyer of being behind the removal. I had and have no way to say this was or was not so. The case made a big impact for a while. I guess my point here is that the law can be lawless and that if there ever were a court that needed a jury of intelligent citizens armed with knowledge of the doctrine of jury nullification it would be Family Court.
http://www.nydailynews.com/archives/news/1998/06/19/1998-06-19_sawyer_girl_not_getting_ther.html
One of the allegations against this mom was that she had not sent her daughter to therapy. Imagine that! Best kidnap the kid right now and send her into a hell she will never forget, and ooops, sorry, forget the therapy.
Click the above link. Nothing has changed at child welfare (aka child protective services)
Another link about the case:
http://www.nydailynews.com/archives/news/1998/06/16/1998-06-16_star_power_backfired_despite.html
http://www.uscourts.gov/outreach/resources/williampenntrial.htm
The Trial of William Penn
The trial takes about twenty minutes. It is amusing and more complex than it appears. Although it may seem simplistic it deals with two very important issues, the writ of habeas corpus and jury nullification.
Adapted from the play:
The Tryal of William Penn and William Mead
By: Mary DeAngelis and Margo Gulati
CHARACTERS:
-Narrator
-Crier
-Court, Lord Chief Justice of the Court of King's Bench
-Jurors, 12, including the Foreman and Bushel
-Foreman, Thomas Veer (Juror)
-Edward Bushel, Juror
-William Penn, Defendant
-Clerk
-James cook, Witness
-Richard Read, Witness
NARRATOR: The date is September 1, 1670. The place is the Old Bailey Courthouse in London, England. The Conventicle Act makes it a crime for any person who is not a member of the Church of England to preach inside a building. Knowing this, 21-year-old William Penn, a Quaker and future founder of the colony of Pennsylvania, preached to an assembly of Quakers (a religious group not in unity with the Church of England) on Gracechurch-Street in London. He was arrested and charged with fomenting an unlawful and tumultuous assembly. His trial, which demonstrates the extent to which jurors will go to protect the role and responsibility of the jury, is about to begin.
CRIER: Oyez. All those having business before this honorable court are admonished to draw near, give their attention, and they shall be heard. God save the King!
The honorable men of the jury: Thomas Veer, Edward Bushel, John Hammond, Charles Milson, Gregory Walklet, John Brightman, William Plumstead, Henry Henley, Thomas Damask, Henry Michel, William Lever, and John Baily.
Oath: "You shall swear that your verdict in this matter shall be based upon the evidence presented in this trial and upon the evidence alone. So help you God."
JURORS: We do.
CRIER: William Penn. You shall now hear the indictment against you.
That you, William Penn, on or about the 14th day of August 1670, with force and arms, did unlawfully and tumultuously assemble yourself and others in disturbance of the peace. Moreover, once assembled, you did preach and speak to the crowd, an action that resulted in an even greater disturbance of the peace.
COURT: How do you plead, William Penn? Guilty or not guilty?
PENN: I plead not guilty.
COURT: Bring William Penn to the Bar.
NARRATOR: In order to both wear down and instill fear in Penn, the court does not begin his trial immediately, but makes him wait until the trials of felons and murderers have taken place. More often then not, these trials result in guilty verdicts and death sentences. After five hours of this, court adjourns. It reconvenes on September 3. As was customary, Penn removed his hat when he entered the courtroom. On this day, however, the court instructed the clerk to place it back upon his head.
COURT: William Penn. Do you know where you are? Do you not know that you are in the King's Court?
PENN: I do.
COURT: Then why do you not show respect to the court and remove your hat?
PENN: I did come into court with my hat off, but the court ordered that it be placed back upon my head.
COURT: The court has heard enough. You are fined 40 marks for your contempt of court.
PENN: Since the court commanded me to put my hat back on my head, I believe that the court should be fined. I ask the jury to note the injustice that I have been subjected to by the court.
NARRATOR: The first witness is James Cook, a soldier who was sent to arrest Penn.
CLERK: Crier, call James Cook into court, and give him the oath.
CRIER: James Cook, come into court.
CLERK: James Cook, lay your hand upon the Bible. Do you solemnly swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?
COOK: I do.
COURT: Please give your testimony to the court.
COOK: I was sent to disperse a meeting at Gracechurch-Street. When I arrived, I saw the defendant, William Penn, speaking to a crowd of about 300 or 400 people. I attempted to arrest him, but I could not get near him because of the crowd.
NARRATOR: James Cook is excused. The next witness is Richard Read. He was present when William Penn was arrested.
COURT: Crier, call Richard Read, and give him the oath.
CRIER: Richard Read, come into court.
CLERK: Richard Read, lay your hand upon the Bible. Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?
READ: I do. My Lord, I was sent to Gracechurch-Street where I found William Penn speaking to a large group of people. Due to the noise of the crowd, though, I was not able to hear what Penn was saying.
PENN: (Interrupting) Jury members, remember this evidence. He says that he heard me speaking, but was not able to hear about what I was speaking.
COURT: Be quiet, Mr. Penn! Mr. Read, about how many persons do you think were present?
READ: About 400 or 500.
COURT: Mr. Penn, do you have any questions for the witness?
PENN: Yes, my Lord. What was the day in question?
READ: August 14.
NARRATOR: Richard Read is excused. Instead of presenting his side of the case, William Penn proceeds to get into a legal argument with the court.
PENN: I have a question for the court.
COURT: What is your question, Mr. Penn?
PENN: I demand to know what is the legal basis for my indictment? I am not aware of any place where it is written down that my actions are illegal. Please show me a law book that contains the provision prohibiting my actions.
COURT: Mr. Penn, the legal basis for your indictment is the common law. The provision prohibiting your action is not simply written down in any one place. Rather, it is the result of legal principles that have been put forth and expanded upon as result of many years--hundreds of years--of court cases.
PENN: In that case, my Lord, I wish to withdraw my earlier plea of not guilty.
COURT: Do you now wish to plead guilty?
PENN: No, my Lord. I simply desire not to plead.
COURT: What do you mean! You have to enter a plea.
PENN: Shall I plead to an indictment that has no foundation in law? No one can even show me where the provision prohibiting my action is written down! The question is not whether I am guilty of the indictment, but rather is the indictment legal? Unless I know where and what the common law is, the indictment is too general and imperfect for me to answer.
COURT: How dare you lecture me on what the law is? How can I tell you in a moment what it has taken some a lifetime of study to understand?
PENN: If the common law is so hard to understand, then I suppose it is not very common.
COURT: Mr. Penn, I can see that you are a troublesome person. I warn you, though, that the court's patience is not infinite, and it will not suffer you to go on for much longer.
PENN: All I ask is that you allow me to exercise the rights that belong to every Englishman. How can one be convicted of an action that he had no way of knowing was forbidden?
CLERK: (addressing the court): My Lord, if you do not do something to keep this pestilent fellow quiet, we will not be able to get anything done tonight.
COURT (to the jailor): Take Mr. Penn away. Take him to the Bale-dock.
NARRATOR: The Bale-dock is a walled-off part of the courtroom in which the partitions do not touch the ceiling. This action is intended to remove William Penn from the sight of the jurors, but he is still able to be heard and to hear the proceedings.
PENN (exclaiming to the jury): Is this justice? Must I be taken away because I plead for the fundamental laws of England? If this action be permitted, it can only lead to disaster. Certainly our liberties will be invaded, our wives ravished, our children enslaved, our families ruined, and our estates led away in triumph. This is the consequence of forfeiting our rights.
COURT (to Penn): Be quiet! Far from being their defender, Mr. Penn, I look upon you as being the enemy of the laws of England!
NARRATOR: Penn is now locked away in the Bale-dock. Since all of the witnesses against Penn have testified, the court begins instructing the jury.
COURT: Gentlemen of the jury, you have heard the indictment against William Penn. It is for unlawfully and tumultuously assembling a crowd in disturbance of the peace and for preaching to the said crowd. You have heard witnesses prove these facts. These are the facts which you have sworn to rely upon in reaching a verdict.
PENN (to the jury): I appeal to the jury, who are my judges, to recognize that the proceedings of this court are arbitrary. It is unlawful for the court to instruct the jury in the absence of the prisoner. This violates the Magna Carta, the source of all of our laws.
COURT (to Penn sarcastically): I hear you, but I do not see you.
PENN: That is because you had me locked in the Bale-dock. My jurors, you cannot depart until you have heard my side of the story. It is unlawful for the court to instruct the jury and send it to deliberate without allowing the prisoner to plead his case.
COURT: You deserve to have your tongue cut out, Mr. Penn! Pull that fellow down, pull him down! Place him in the hole.
NARRATOR: The hole is a space underneath the Bale-dock into which the Bale-dock can be lowered.
COURT (turning to the jury): I am sorry that you had to witness that. Mr. Penn may talk to himself all night if he so desires. I am sure that you are tired of his antics and do not have the patience to hear anymore from him. You may retire now to consider your verdict. Once you are agreed, return.
NARRATOR: Some time passes, and the jury reaches a verdict and court is reconvened.
COURT: Are you agreed upon your verdict?
JURY: Yes.
COURT: Look upon the prisoner at the bar. How say you? Is William Penn guilty or not guilty of the crime for which he is indicted?
FOREMAN: Guilty of speaking in Gracechurch-Street, my Lord.
COURT: Is that all?
FOREMAN: That is all I have to say.
COURT (agitated): That does not mean a thing! What about the unlawful assembly? That is what he is charged with fomenting. You mean he was speaking to the tumult of the people, do you not?
FOREMAN: That is all I can say.
NARRATOR: The court presses the Foreman over the issue of the unlawful assembly. After much questioning, the Foreman makes some concessions to the court. At this point, three jurors, including Edward Bushel, tell the court that they had not authorized the Foreman to speak for them beyond the verdict. At this point, the court begins to belittle the jurors, sometimes with profanity.
COURT (to the jury): I have had enough of your insolence. The laws of England will not allow you to leave until you have provided the court with a real verdict.
BUSHEL: We have given our verdict and can give no other.
COURT: What you have given is not a verdict. Go and consider your decision again.
NARRATOR: The jury is sent to deliberate again. A half hour later, it returns.
COURT: Are you in agreement with your verdict.
JURY: Yes.
COURT: What say you? Look upon the prisoner. Is William Penn guilty or not guilty of the crime for which he is indicted?
FOREMAN: We the jury find William Penn to be guilty of speaking or preaching to an assembly in Gracechurch-Street on August 14, 1670.
COURT (extremely agitated): Why do you allow yourselves to be led by Bushel? Gentlemen, you will pay for your insolence. You will not be dismissed until we have a verdict--a verdict that the court will accept. And, until we do, you will be locked up, without meat, drink, fire, and tobacco; you will not think to abuse the court. By God, we will have a verdict, or you will starve for it!
PENN (protesting the jurors' treatment from the Bale-dock): The verdict of the jurors, who are my judges, ought not to be forced, but should be freely given.
COURT (to Penn): Will you ever be quiet Mr. Penn? If you do not close your mouth, I will have you put out of court.
PENN (ignoring the court): Jurors, remember that we, the Quakers, were by force of arms kept out of our lawful meeting house. That is why we met in the street; however, we did not disturb anyone. To the contrary, we were disturbed.
COURT: Be quiet Mr. Penn, I am warning you.
PENN (continuing to address the jury, unmoved by the court's admonishment): The agreement of 12 men is a verdict in law. If one is given by the jury, I require the clerk to record it, or answer for it at his peril. And if the jury brings in another verdict contradictory to this, I affirm that they are perjured men in law. You are Englishmen, mind your privilege, and do not give away your rights.
BUSHEL: We never will.
NARRATOR: William Penn quiets down. As the jury is about to be led away, one juror comes forward and pleads with the court that he is too infirm to be denied food and drink.
COURT (to the infirm juror): You appear to be as strong as the rest; therefore, you may starve with them.
COURT (to the jury): For the rest of you, resign yourselves to your hard fate. The court will have a verdict, a verdict you shall provide before you are dismissed.
NARRATOR: The court adjourns until seven o'clock the following morning. When court is called to order, the Jury is called in to announce its verdict.
COURT: Are you agreed upon a verdict?
JURY: Yes.
COURT: What say you? Look upon the prisoner at the bar. Is William Penn guilty or not guilty of the crime for which he is indicted?
FOREMAN: He is guilty of speaking in Gracechurch-Street.
COURT (bewildered): To an unlawful assembly?
BUSHEL (defiantly): No, my Lord. Not to an unlawful assembly. Our verdict has not changed since last night.
COURT (to Bushel): You are a factious fellow, and you will pay for your defiance.
BUSHEL: I have acted according to my conscience.
COURT: That conscience of yours would cut my throat.
BUSHEL: No, my Lord. It never shall.
COURT: But I will cut yours as soon as I can. You have inspired the jury to insolence. Very well, Mr. Bushel. Know this, though, you are not going anywhere until I have a verdict. Mark my words, I will have a positive verdict, or you will starve for it!
NARRATOR: The jury is sent to deliberate once again. It is brought back into the courtroom later in the day.
COURT: What say you? Is William Penn guilty of the crime for which he stands indicted, or not guilty?
FOREMAN: Guilty of speaking in Gracechurch-Street.
COURT (to the jury): Again I ask, why do you allow yourselves to be led by this man (pointing to Bushel)? I desire to find a way to punish you, Mr. Bushel, for your abuse of this court.
PENN (interrupting): Ashamed are the jurors who give verdicts contradictory to their conscience.
CLERK: My Lord, please make Mr. Penn remain quiet.
COURT (to the jailor): Jailor, bring shackles, and stake Mr. Penn to the ground.
PENN (defiantly): Do what you wish.
COURT: Until now, I have never understood why the Spanish permitted the procedures used by the Inquisition. After this trial, I must admit that I do see some merit in them.
NARRATOR: William Penn is silenced. The jury is sent to deliberate, but it is shortly called back into court.
COURT (to the jury): You will be happy to know that courts will not have to put up with such insolence for much longer. Next session, a bill will be going through Parliament that will require juries to render true verdicts, or place themselves outside of the protection of the law. That being said, I realize that we will get nowhere with you. Therefore, I am instructing the clerk to draw up a special verdict, directing that the prisoner be found guilty of unlawfully and tumultuously assembling in disturbance of the peace.
JURY: That is unlawful. We have already agreed to a verdict!
COURT: Your verdict does not mean anything. You play games with the court. Now, listen very carefully. I am giving you one last time to deliberate and reach a true verdict. If you do not, you will starve.
NARRATOR: Court adjourns for the evening. The jurors are taken to Newgate prison for the night. The following day, court reconvenes.
COURT (to the jury): This is your last chance. Look upon the prisoner. What say you? Is William Penn guilty of the crime, or is he not guilty?
FOREMAN: Here is our verdict in writing.
NARRATOR: The paper is delivered to the Lord Chief Justice.
COURT (upon reading the paper): I ask again, is William Penn guilty or not guilty?
FOREMAN: Not guilty, my Lord.
COURT: So say you all?
JURY: Yes, we do.
NARRATOR: Not being satisfied with their verdict, the court polls the jury, having every juror give their verdict when his name is called.
COURT (to the jury): Members of the jury, I am sorry that you followed your own judgments instead of relying upon the advice of this court and upon the facts presented in this case. For giving a false verdict, the court fines each of you 40 marks and orders that you be imprisoned until the fine is paid.
PENN: I demand my liberty, having been found not guilty by the jury.
COURT: Mr. Penn, you shall not have it. You are still in contempt of court. You are to remain imprisoned until you pay the 40 marks levied against you for wearing your hat into court.
PENN: I protest this action. Can any man be fined or imprisoned except upon the judgment of his peers? Does this not violate the fourteenth and twenty-ninth chapters of our great law, the Magna Carta?
COURT (to the jailor): I determine what the law is. Get him out of this court! Take him out! Take him out!
PENN (to the Lord Chief Justice): I argue for the fundamental laws of England; all you argue is that I be taken away. No wonder you hold such a special place in your heart for the Spanish Inquisition!
NARRATOR: Both Penn and his jurors are hauled away to Newgate prison for nonpayment of their fines.
AFTERWORD
NARRATOR: While in prison, juror Edward Bushel files a writ of habeas corpus with the Court of Common Pleas (a type of appeals court) in England, arguing that his imprisonment is unlawful. A writ of habeas corpus is a legal procedure that allows prisoners to contest the legality of their imprisonment. Chief Justice Vaughan agreed with Bushel and ordered the confined jurors to be released. "Bushel's Case," as it came to be known, is of a great importance in law because it established the concept of jury nullification. In essence, the court reaffirmed the principle that the right to determine the facts of a given case is the sole prerogative of the jury, not the judge. Consequently, even if a jury in a criminal case finds a defendant not guilty when all of the facts might prove guilt to an objective person, courts cannot punish the jurors for rendering what might be considered a false verdict. Courts also cannot try to compel them to change their verdict. Today, jury nullification is sometimes used to make a social statement that the jurors think a particular law is unjust and that people should not be prosecuted for violating it.
http://www.prorev.com/juries.htm
JUROR'S MANUAL
NEWS ITEMS
What lawyers & judges
won't tell you
about juries
By Sam Smith
The fully informed jury movement has been in the news and the subject of badly misinformed journalism. The following article, which appeared in the Progressive Review in 1990, explains this important issue:
William Penn may have thought he had settled the matter. Arrested in 1670 for preaching Quakerism, Penn was brought to trial. Despite Penn's admitting the charge, four of the 12 jurors voted to acquit. The judge sent the four to jail "without meat, drink, fire and tobacco" for failing to find Penn guilty. On appeal, however, the jurors' action was upheld and the right of juries to judge both the law and the facts -- to nullify the law if it chose -- became part of British constitutional law.
It ultimately became part of American constitutional law as well, but you'd never know it listening to jury instructions today almost anywhere in the country. With only a few exceptions, juries are explicitly or implicitly told to worry only about the facts and let the judge decide the law. The right of jury nullification has become one of the legal system's best kept secrets.
Now a remarkable coalition has sprung up to challenge this secrecy as undemocratic, unconstitutional and dangerous. Though organized by libertarian activists, the Fully Informed Jury Amendment movement includes liberals and conservatives, Greens, drug decriminalization advocates, gun owner groups, peace activists, both sides of the abortion controversy, helmet and seatbelt activists, alternative medicine practitioners, taxpayer rights groups, environmentalists, criminal trial lawyers and law professors.
Organized by Larry Dodge and Don Doig, both of Helmville, Montana (population: 26; elevation 4300'), FIJA seeks to require that juries be informed of their nullification rights. Informed jury amendments have been filed as an initiative in seven states and legislation has been introduced in the Alaska state legislature.
Merely raising the issue of nullification can make prosecutors nervous, for it takes only one person aware of the right in order to hang a jury. In Washington, DC, where the concept was discussed in connection with the Marion Barry trial, a local television station reported that the US Attorney was worried that a jury might nullify the law in that case. The joke in DC was that Barry was campaigning, but only for one vote, that of a single juror. The specific charges against Barry revolved around his use of drugs and a growing number of people are coming to accept the argument that drug use or addiction should not be a criminal offense. Further many DC residents were concerned about the prosecution's heavy-handed pursuit of the mayor. Despite the refusal of courts to inform juries of their right to nullify, American juries have periodically exercised it anyway. In recent years, some peace protesters have been acquitted despite strong evidence that they violated the law. In the 19th century northern juries would refuse to convict under the fugitive slave laws. And in 1735 journalist Peter Zenger, accused of seditious libel, was acquitted by a jury that ignored the court's instructions on the law.
Those who have endorsed the right of a jury to judge both the law and the facts include Chief Justice John Jay, Samuel Chase, Dean Roscoe Pound, Learned Hand and Oliver Wendell Holmes. According to the Yale Law Journal in 1964, during the first third of the 19th century judges did inform juries of the right, forcing lawyers to argue "the law -- its interpretation and validity -- to the jury." By the latter part of the century, however, judges and state law were increasingly moving against nullification. In 1895 the US Supreme Court upheld the principle but ruled that juries were not to be informed of it by defense attorneys, nor were judges required to tell them about it. Stephen Barkan, writing in Social Problems (October 1983), noted that the attacks on nullification stemmed in part from juries acquitting strike organizers and other labor activists. And in 1892 the American Bar Review warned that jurors had "developed agrarian tendencies of an alarming character."
Today, the constitutions of only two states -- Maryland and Indiana -- clearly declare the nullification right, although two others -- Georgia and Oregon -- refer to it obliquely. The informed jury movement would like all states to require that judges instruct juries on their power to serve, in effect, as the final legislature of the land concerning the law in a particular case.
As the diverse nature of the movement suggests, many groups in this country feel the government has overstepped its power in some way and that there must be protection for the natural rights of American citizens. They are defending not only the right to protest or carry a gun or not wear seatbelts but challenging the right of the government to decide such matters without the mediating effect of a jury's judgement of fairness in a particular case.
For many liberals and progressives, who tend to be confident of the beneficent nature of government power, such a challenge may be a bit uncomfortable -- understandable in a case involving a peace protest, less appreciated if invoked by a member of the National Rifle Association. The libertarians argue that the two are of one cloth. As government intrusion in individual matters has increased, the libertarian view has gained influence, helping to tilt normal left-right divisions on their side. Libertarians, for example, have been key to the growing opposition to the barbaric Reagan-Bush war on drugs, providing some of the best analysis and advocacy available on the issue.
Libertarians are again in the lead on the nullification issue. Many progressives may be uneasy about the thought of a western jury nullifying a case involving a gun control or seatbelt law, but this unease reminds one of little discussed principles that were once considered central to being an American -- not the least of which was freedom from some government official telling you how to live your life. As the design of the modern centralized welfare state frays and becomes increasingly authoritarian, reacquaintance with some of our individualistic roots has much to recommend it.
NULLIFYING NULLIFICATION
It was nice to see the Washington Post finally giving some attention to jury nullification, even if after four months of research and interviews with more than 100 jurors, judges, defense lawyers and prosecutors, it still couldn't get the story right.
For example reporter Joan Biskupic stated, "Anyone accused of a crime in this country is entitled to a jury trial." The Constitution may say so but, in fact, this is simply not the case -- and becoming less so as politicians fiddle with legal definitions and sentencing standards in order specifically to reduce the number of persons entitled to a trial.
Biskupic also wrote: "The American custom is that jurors decide the facts of the case (whether the person did what he is accused of) and leave it to judges to interpret the law. There is no room, in other words, for jurors to say whether they think the law is a good one, though there have been a few celebrated exceptions -- notably the 18th-century acquittal of John Peter Zenger of seditious libel and the 19th-century acquittals for prosecution under the fugitive slave law."
This is a rewriting of history, one of the privileges of a reporter who works for a paper free to do so thanks to the rights of jurors upheld in the Zenger case. -- TPR 2/99
In fact, it is unlikely that a jury considering a gun control case would excuse the leader of an underground Nazi movement or a gang of bank robbers. It 1is far more likely that it would acquit the respectable rancher who simply believes that gun control represents further destruction of his paradigm of individual liberty. If so, what have we lost?
The history of jury nullification suggests there is little to fear. In those states where the concept is respected to some degree it has had minimal effect on the overall functioning of the law. Nullification has, on the other hand, played a little noted but significant role in the advance of religious and press freedom, the abolition of slavery and the building of a labor movement. Even in the face of hostility by contemporary courts, it has cropped up in political protest trials of the past few decades. And it might have surfaced more frequently absent that hostility. As one of the jurors said following the conviction of the Berrigan brothers in 1980:
We convicted them on three things, and we really didn't want to convict them on anything. But we had to, because of the way the judge said the only thing that you can use is what you get under the law... I would have loved to hold up a flag to show them we approved of what they were doing. It was very difficult for us to bring in that conviction.
The nullification principle involves the power to say no to the excesses of government, and thus serves as a final defense against tyranny. As Thomas Jefferson put it to Tom Paine in a 1789 letter, "I consider trial by jury as the only anchor ever yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution." To get in touch with the fully informed jury movement write: Fully Informed Jury Association, Box 59, Helmville MT 5984, 406-793-5550
"If a juror feels that the statute involved in any criminal offence is unfair, or that it infringes upon the defendant's natural god-given unalienable or constitutional rights, then it is his duty to affirm that the offending statute is really no law at all and that the violation of it is no crime at all, for no one is bound to obey an unjust law." -- Chief Justice Harlan F. Stone
"For more than six hundred years-- that is, since Magna Carta, in 1215--there has been no clearer principle of English or American constitutional law, than that, in criminal cases, it is not only the right and duty of juries to judge what are the facts, what is the law, and what was the moral intent of the accused; but that it is also their right, and their primary and paramount duty, to judge the justice of the law, and to hold all laws invalid, that are, in their opinion, unjust or oppressive, and all persons guiltless in violating, or resisting the execution of, such law." --Lysander Spooner, The Right of Juries
If the jury feels the law is unjust, we recognize the undisputed power of the jury to acquit, even if its verdict is contrary to the law as given by a judge, and contrary to the evidence. -- 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, US v Moylan, 1969
Every jury in the land is tampered with and falsely instructed by the judge when it is told that it must accept as the law that which has been given to them, or that they can decide only the facts of the case. -- Lord Denham, O'Connell v Rex (1884)
The jury has the power to bring in a verdict in the teeth of both the law and the facts. -- Justice Holmes, Homing v District of Columbia, 138 (1920)
When a jury acquits a defendant even though he or she clearly appears to be guilty, the acquittal conveys significant information about community attitudes and provides a guideline for future prosecutorial discretion...Because of the high acquittal rate in prohibition cases in the 1920s and early 1930s, prohibition laws could not be enforced. The repeal of these laws is traceable to the refusal of juries to convict those accused of alcohol traffic. -- Sheflin and Van Dyke, Law and Contemporary Problems, 43, No. 4, 1980
It is not only the juror's right, but his duty, to find the verdict according to his own best understanding, judgment and conscience, though in direct opposition to the directions of the court.-- John Adams
THE WIRE'S WRITERS COME OUT FOR FULL JURY RIGHTS
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Today I was on a panel of thirty-five citizens of New York County in a civil case involving a woman construction worker who claims injuries in an alleged slip and fall accident she says was caused by the negligence of the landlord, the construction contractor and I think a subcontractor. I'd like to say for the record I was scared by many of my fellow prospective jurors, their pre disposition to assume this woman, whose case they had not even heard yet must be gaming the system. I'm glad that at least they were forthright enough to spill their guts for the attorneys, though maybe, just maybe some claimed a predisposition because jury duty sucks, it pays $40 a day, with no compensation for travel time, and the lawyers offered an estimate that the case would go for six days.
The jury system is surely broken as it is.
I offered that I thought I could be fair but that I doubted I could honestly take the oath, as I would be swearing to God that I will follow the judge's version of the law, when I know that since the 1670's in common law in the English speaking realms there is an understanding of jury nullification. This got me a get out of jury duty free pass, which is a shame because I could take the six days, given that I'm a pensioner and I could be fair, because as left as I am I would not award someone who was not injured by the fault of others, as this stuff makes it harder for real victims of negligence to find justice and recompense.
Anyhow, maybe some juror will google "jury nullification" and find out what it means. Maybe some lawer will! That would be its own reward.
I got called for jury duty and served my first day today. They showed us prospective jurors a video in which it was claimed that we must follow the judge's instructions, ie. his or her version of what the law says and then simply make a determination of who or what did or did not violate the law. The video cited the case of William Penn, saying he had been arrested and prosecuted for a "disorderly" sermon on a London street. The jurors in the Penn case had been expected to do what the crown wanted them to do, that is to convict Penn. They did not convict, and they were themselves imprisoned.
One of the narrators of the video was Diane Sawyer. Her appearance put me back to the days when I was unhappily granted fifteen minutes of fame while a struggling $25,000 a year caseworker who lived in a seventy-five dollar a week room with shared bathroom and no kitchen privileges in the attic of Marty O'Toole on Sedgwick Avenue in the Bronx. I stopped by a newsstand on my way to my usual breakfast diner and saw a case I was involved in trumpeted across the New york Daily News front page. "Diane Sawyer Stole My Baby." In this case I had been ordered to remove several children from their loving mother who was struggling with drug addiction but had succeeded in providing more than minimal care for them. I followed the orders of my manager who was not intimately involved in the case and had never met the family at all. The removal was to be done as an "emergency removal" prior to a court hearing which would take place the following day. It could be argued that the kids had to be removed temporarily and brought to someplace better but in my first hand opinion, and I had removed dozens of kids, and knew this family, there was no immediate need to take them out before a judge could review the case. In fact juries need to be assembled to sit on these child removal travesties. I had to fight like a tiger to get them placed with their grandmother, although the damage had been done, they were traumatized, I am sure, for life.
The mom accused Sawyer of being behind the removal. I had and have no way to say this was or was not so. The case made a big impact for a while. I guess my point here is that the law can be lawless and that if there ever were a court that needed a jury of intelligent citizens armed with knowledge of the doctrine of jury nullification it would be Family Court.
http://www.nydailynews.com/archives/news/1998/06/19/1998-06-19_sawyer_girl_not_getting_ther.html
One of the allegations against this mom was that she had not sent her daughter to therapy. Imagine that! Best kidnap the kid right now and send her into a hell she will never forget, and ooops, sorry, forget the therapy.
Click the above link. Nothing has changed at child welfare (aka child protective services)
Another link about the case:
http://www.nydailynews.com/archives/news/1998/06/16/1998-06-16_star_power_backfired_despite.html
http://www.uscourts.gov/outreach/resources/williampenntrial.htm
The Trial of William Penn
The trial takes about twenty minutes. It is amusing and more complex than it appears. Although it may seem simplistic it deals with two very important issues, the writ of habeas corpus and jury nullification.
Adapted from the play:
The Tryal of William Penn and William Mead
By: Mary DeAngelis and Margo Gulati
CHARACTERS:
-Narrator
-Crier
-Court, Lord Chief Justice of the Court of King's Bench
-Jurors, 12, including the Foreman and Bushel
-Foreman, Thomas Veer (Juror)
-Edward Bushel, Juror
-William Penn, Defendant
-Clerk
-James cook, Witness
-Richard Read, Witness
NARRATOR: The date is September 1, 1670. The place is the Old Bailey Courthouse in London, England. The Conventicle Act makes it a crime for any person who is not a member of the Church of England to preach inside a building. Knowing this, 21-year-old William Penn, a Quaker and future founder of the colony of Pennsylvania, preached to an assembly of Quakers (a religious group not in unity with the Church of England) on Gracechurch-Street in London. He was arrested and charged with fomenting an unlawful and tumultuous assembly. His trial, which demonstrates the extent to which jurors will go to protect the role and responsibility of the jury, is about to begin.
CRIER: Oyez. All those having business before this honorable court are admonished to draw near, give their attention, and they shall be heard. God save the King!
The honorable men of the jury: Thomas Veer, Edward Bushel, John Hammond, Charles Milson, Gregory Walklet, John Brightman, William Plumstead, Henry Henley, Thomas Damask, Henry Michel, William Lever, and John Baily.
Oath: "You shall swear that your verdict in this matter shall be based upon the evidence presented in this trial and upon the evidence alone. So help you God."
JURORS: We do.
CRIER: William Penn. You shall now hear the indictment against you.
That you, William Penn, on or about the 14th day of August 1670, with force and arms, did unlawfully and tumultuously assemble yourself and others in disturbance of the peace. Moreover, once assembled, you did preach and speak to the crowd, an action that resulted in an even greater disturbance of the peace.
COURT: How do you plead, William Penn? Guilty or not guilty?
PENN: I plead not guilty.
COURT: Bring William Penn to the Bar.
NARRATOR: In order to both wear down and instill fear in Penn, the court does not begin his trial immediately, but makes him wait until the trials of felons and murderers have taken place. More often then not, these trials result in guilty verdicts and death sentences. After five hours of this, court adjourns. It reconvenes on September 3. As was customary, Penn removed his hat when he entered the courtroom. On this day, however, the court instructed the clerk to place it back upon his head.
COURT: William Penn. Do you know where you are? Do you not know that you are in the King's Court?
PENN: I do.
COURT: Then why do you not show respect to the court and remove your hat?
PENN: I did come into court with my hat off, but the court ordered that it be placed back upon my head.
COURT: The court has heard enough. You are fined 40 marks for your contempt of court.
PENN: Since the court commanded me to put my hat back on my head, I believe that the court should be fined. I ask the jury to note the injustice that I have been subjected to by the court.
NARRATOR: The first witness is James Cook, a soldier who was sent to arrest Penn.
CLERK: Crier, call James Cook into court, and give him the oath.
CRIER: James Cook, come into court.
CLERK: James Cook, lay your hand upon the Bible. Do you solemnly swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?
COOK: I do.
COURT: Please give your testimony to the court.
COOK: I was sent to disperse a meeting at Gracechurch-Street. When I arrived, I saw the defendant, William Penn, speaking to a crowd of about 300 or 400 people. I attempted to arrest him, but I could not get near him because of the crowd.
NARRATOR: James Cook is excused. The next witness is Richard Read. He was present when William Penn was arrested.
COURT: Crier, call Richard Read, and give him the oath.
CRIER: Richard Read, come into court.
CLERK: Richard Read, lay your hand upon the Bible. Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?
READ: I do. My Lord, I was sent to Gracechurch-Street where I found William Penn speaking to a large group of people. Due to the noise of the crowd, though, I was not able to hear what Penn was saying.
PENN: (Interrupting) Jury members, remember this evidence. He says that he heard me speaking, but was not able to hear about what I was speaking.
COURT: Be quiet, Mr. Penn! Mr. Read, about how many persons do you think were present?
READ: About 400 or 500.
COURT: Mr. Penn, do you have any questions for the witness?
PENN: Yes, my Lord. What was the day in question?
READ: August 14.
NARRATOR: Richard Read is excused. Instead of presenting his side of the case, William Penn proceeds to get into a legal argument with the court.
PENN: I have a question for the court.
COURT: What is your question, Mr. Penn?
PENN: I demand to know what is the legal basis for my indictment? I am not aware of any place where it is written down that my actions are illegal. Please show me a law book that contains the provision prohibiting my actions.
COURT: Mr. Penn, the legal basis for your indictment is the common law. The provision prohibiting your action is not simply written down in any one place. Rather, it is the result of legal principles that have been put forth and expanded upon as result of many years--hundreds of years--of court cases.
PENN: In that case, my Lord, I wish to withdraw my earlier plea of not guilty.
COURT: Do you now wish to plead guilty?
PENN: No, my Lord. I simply desire not to plead.
COURT: What do you mean! You have to enter a plea.
PENN: Shall I plead to an indictment that has no foundation in law? No one can even show me where the provision prohibiting my action is written down! The question is not whether I am guilty of the indictment, but rather is the indictment legal? Unless I know where and what the common law is, the indictment is too general and imperfect for me to answer.
COURT: How dare you lecture me on what the law is? How can I tell you in a moment what it has taken some a lifetime of study to understand?
PENN: If the common law is so hard to understand, then I suppose it is not very common.
COURT: Mr. Penn, I can see that you are a troublesome person. I warn you, though, that the court's patience is not infinite, and it will not suffer you to go on for much longer.
PENN: All I ask is that you allow me to exercise the rights that belong to every Englishman. How can one be convicted of an action that he had no way of knowing was forbidden?
CLERK: (addressing the court): My Lord, if you do not do something to keep this pestilent fellow quiet, we will not be able to get anything done tonight.
COURT (to the jailor): Take Mr. Penn away. Take him to the Bale-dock.
NARRATOR: The Bale-dock is a walled-off part of the courtroom in which the partitions do not touch the ceiling. This action is intended to remove William Penn from the sight of the jurors, but he is still able to be heard and to hear the proceedings.
PENN (exclaiming to the jury): Is this justice? Must I be taken away because I plead for the fundamental laws of England? If this action be permitted, it can only lead to disaster. Certainly our liberties will be invaded, our wives ravished, our children enslaved, our families ruined, and our estates led away in triumph. This is the consequence of forfeiting our rights.
COURT (to Penn): Be quiet! Far from being their defender, Mr. Penn, I look upon you as being the enemy of the laws of England!
NARRATOR: Penn is now locked away in the Bale-dock. Since all of the witnesses against Penn have testified, the court begins instructing the jury.
COURT: Gentlemen of the jury, you have heard the indictment against William Penn. It is for unlawfully and tumultuously assembling a crowd in disturbance of the peace and for preaching to the said crowd. You have heard witnesses prove these facts. These are the facts which you have sworn to rely upon in reaching a verdict.
PENN (to the jury): I appeal to the jury, who are my judges, to recognize that the proceedings of this court are arbitrary. It is unlawful for the court to instruct the jury in the absence of the prisoner. This violates the Magna Carta, the source of all of our laws.
COURT (to Penn sarcastically): I hear you, but I do not see you.
PENN: That is because you had me locked in the Bale-dock. My jurors, you cannot depart until you have heard my side of the story. It is unlawful for the court to instruct the jury and send it to deliberate without allowing the prisoner to plead his case.
COURT: You deserve to have your tongue cut out, Mr. Penn! Pull that fellow down, pull him down! Place him in the hole.
NARRATOR: The hole is a space underneath the Bale-dock into which the Bale-dock can be lowered.
COURT (turning to the jury): I am sorry that you had to witness that. Mr. Penn may talk to himself all night if he so desires. I am sure that you are tired of his antics and do not have the patience to hear anymore from him. You may retire now to consider your verdict. Once you are agreed, return.
NARRATOR: Some time passes, and the jury reaches a verdict and court is reconvened.
COURT: Are you agreed upon your verdict?
JURY: Yes.
COURT: Look upon the prisoner at the bar. How say you? Is William Penn guilty or not guilty of the crime for which he is indicted?
FOREMAN: Guilty of speaking in Gracechurch-Street, my Lord.
COURT: Is that all?
FOREMAN: That is all I have to say.
COURT (agitated): That does not mean a thing! What about the unlawful assembly? That is what he is charged with fomenting. You mean he was speaking to the tumult of the people, do you not?
FOREMAN: That is all I can say.
NARRATOR: The court presses the Foreman over the issue of the unlawful assembly. After much questioning, the Foreman makes some concessions to the court. At this point, three jurors, including Edward Bushel, tell the court that they had not authorized the Foreman to speak for them beyond the verdict. At this point, the court begins to belittle the jurors, sometimes with profanity.
COURT (to the jury): I have had enough of your insolence. The laws of England will not allow you to leave until you have provided the court with a real verdict.
BUSHEL: We have given our verdict and can give no other.
COURT: What you have given is not a verdict. Go and consider your decision again.
NARRATOR: The jury is sent to deliberate again. A half hour later, it returns.
COURT: Are you in agreement with your verdict.
JURY: Yes.
COURT: What say you? Look upon the prisoner. Is William Penn guilty or not guilty of the crime for which he is indicted?
FOREMAN: We the jury find William Penn to be guilty of speaking or preaching to an assembly in Gracechurch-Street on August 14, 1670.
COURT (extremely agitated): Why do you allow yourselves to be led by Bushel? Gentlemen, you will pay for your insolence. You will not be dismissed until we have a verdict--a verdict that the court will accept. And, until we do, you will be locked up, without meat, drink, fire, and tobacco; you will not think to abuse the court. By God, we will have a verdict, or you will starve for it!
PENN (protesting the jurors' treatment from the Bale-dock): The verdict of the jurors, who are my judges, ought not to be forced, but should be freely given.
COURT (to Penn): Will you ever be quiet Mr. Penn? If you do not close your mouth, I will have you put out of court.
PENN (ignoring the court): Jurors, remember that we, the Quakers, were by force of arms kept out of our lawful meeting house. That is why we met in the street; however, we did not disturb anyone. To the contrary, we were disturbed.
COURT: Be quiet Mr. Penn, I am warning you.
PENN (continuing to address the jury, unmoved by the court's admonishment): The agreement of 12 men is a verdict in law. If one is given by the jury, I require the clerk to record it, or answer for it at his peril. And if the jury brings in another verdict contradictory to this, I affirm that they are perjured men in law. You are Englishmen, mind your privilege, and do not give away your rights.
BUSHEL: We never will.
NARRATOR: William Penn quiets down. As the jury is about to be led away, one juror comes forward and pleads with the court that he is too infirm to be denied food and drink.
COURT (to the infirm juror): You appear to be as strong as the rest; therefore, you may starve with them.
COURT (to the jury): For the rest of you, resign yourselves to your hard fate. The court will have a verdict, a verdict you shall provide before you are dismissed.
NARRATOR: The court adjourns until seven o'clock the following morning. When court is called to order, the Jury is called in to announce its verdict.
COURT: Are you agreed upon a verdict?
JURY: Yes.
COURT: What say you? Look upon the prisoner at the bar. Is William Penn guilty or not guilty of the crime for which he is indicted?
FOREMAN: He is guilty of speaking in Gracechurch-Street.
COURT (bewildered): To an unlawful assembly?
BUSHEL (defiantly): No, my Lord. Not to an unlawful assembly. Our verdict has not changed since last night.
COURT (to Bushel): You are a factious fellow, and you will pay for your defiance.
BUSHEL: I have acted according to my conscience.
COURT: That conscience of yours would cut my throat.
BUSHEL: No, my Lord. It never shall.
COURT: But I will cut yours as soon as I can. You have inspired the jury to insolence. Very well, Mr. Bushel. Know this, though, you are not going anywhere until I have a verdict. Mark my words, I will have a positive verdict, or you will starve for it!
NARRATOR: The jury is sent to deliberate once again. It is brought back into the courtroom later in the day.
COURT: What say you? Is William Penn guilty of the crime for which he stands indicted, or not guilty?
FOREMAN: Guilty of speaking in Gracechurch-Street.
COURT (to the jury): Again I ask, why do you allow yourselves to be led by this man (pointing to Bushel)? I desire to find a way to punish you, Mr. Bushel, for your abuse of this court.
PENN (interrupting): Ashamed are the jurors who give verdicts contradictory to their conscience.
CLERK: My Lord, please make Mr. Penn remain quiet.
COURT (to the jailor): Jailor, bring shackles, and stake Mr. Penn to the ground.
PENN (defiantly): Do what you wish.
COURT: Until now, I have never understood why the Spanish permitted the procedures used by the Inquisition. After this trial, I must admit that I do see some merit in them.
NARRATOR: William Penn is silenced. The jury is sent to deliberate, but it is shortly called back into court.
COURT (to the jury): You will be happy to know that courts will not have to put up with such insolence for much longer. Next session, a bill will be going through Parliament that will require juries to render true verdicts, or place themselves outside of the protection of the law. That being said, I realize that we will get nowhere with you. Therefore, I am instructing the clerk to draw up a special verdict, directing that the prisoner be found guilty of unlawfully and tumultuously assembling in disturbance of the peace.
JURY: That is unlawful. We have already agreed to a verdict!
COURT: Your verdict does not mean anything. You play games with the court. Now, listen very carefully. I am giving you one last time to deliberate and reach a true verdict. If you do not, you will starve.
NARRATOR: Court adjourns for the evening. The jurors are taken to Newgate prison for the night. The following day, court reconvenes.
COURT (to the jury): This is your last chance. Look upon the prisoner. What say you? Is William Penn guilty of the crime, or is he not guilty?
FOREMAN: Here is our verdict in writing.
NARRATOR: The paper is delivered to the Lord Chief Justice.
COURT (upon reading the paper): I ask again, is William Penn guilty or not guilty?
FOREMAN: Not guilty, my Lord.
COURT: So say you all?
JURY: Yes, we do.
NARRATOR: Not being satisfied with their verdict, the court polls the jury, having every juror give their verdict when his name is called.
COURT (to the jury): Members of the jury, I am sorry that you followed your own judgments instead of relying upon the advice of this court and upon the facts presented in this case. For giving a false verdict, the court fines each of you 40 marks and orders that you be imprisoned until the fine is paid.
PENN: I demand my liberty, having been found not guilty by the jury.
COURT: Mr. Penn, you shall not have it. You are still in contempt of court. You are to remain imprisoned until you pay the 40 marks levied against you for wearing your hat into court.
PENN: I protest this action. Can any man be fined or imprisoned except upon the judgment of his peers? Does this not violate the fourteenth and twenty-ninth chapters of our great law, the Magna Carta?
COURT (to the jailor): I determine what the law is. Get him out of this court! Take him out! Take him out!
PENN (to the Lord Chief Justice): I argue for the fundamental laws of England; all you argue is that I be taken away. No wonder you hold such a special place in your heart for the Spanish Inquisition!
NARRATOR: Both Penn and his jurors are hauled away to Newgate prison for nonpayment of their fines.
AFTERWORD
NARRATOR: While in prison, juror Edward Bushel files a writ of habeas corpus with the Court of Common Pleas (a type of appeals court) in England, arguing that his imprisonment is unlawful. A writ of habeas corpus is a legal procedure that allows prisoners to contest the legality of their imprisonment. Chief Justice Vaughan agreed with Bushel and ordered the confined jurors to be released. "Bushel's Case," as it came to be known, is of a great importance in law because it established the concept of jury nullification. In essence, the court reaffirmed the principle that the right to determine the facts of a given case is the sole prerogative of the jury, not the judge. Consequently, even if a jury in a criminal case finds a defendant not guilty when all of the facts might prove guilt to an objective person, courts cannot punish the jurors for rendering what might be considered a false verdict. Courts also cannot try to compel them to change their verdict. Today, jury nullification is sometimes used to make a social statement that the jurors think a particular law is unjust and that people should not be prosecuted for violating it.
http://www.prorev.com/juries.htm
JUROR'S MANUAL
NEWS ITEMS
What lawyers & judges
won't tell you
about juries
By Sam Smith
The fully informed jury movement has been in the news and the subject of badly misinformed journalism. The following article, which appeared in the Progressive Review in 1990, explains this important issue:
William Penn may have thought he had settled the matter. Arrested in 1670 for preaching Quakerism, Penn was brought to trial. Despite Penn's admitting the charge, four of the 12 jurors voted to acquit. The judge sent the four to jail "without meat, drink, fire and tobacco" for failing to find Penn guilty. On appeal, however, the jurors' action was upheld and the right of juries to judge both the law and the facts -- to nullify the law if it chose -- became part of British constitutional law.
It ultimately became part of American constitutional law as well, but you'd never know it listening to jury instructions today almost anywhere in the country. With only a few exceptions, juries are explicitly or implicitly told to worry only about the facts and let the judge decide the law. The right of jury nullification has become one of the legal system's best kept secrets.
Now a remarkable coalition has sprung up to challenge this secrecy as undemocratic, unconstitutional and dangerous. Though organized by libertarian activists, the Fully Informed Jury Amendment movement includes liberals and conservatives, Greens, drug decriminalization advocates, gun owner groups, peace activists, both sides of the abortion controversy, helmet and seatbelt activists, alternative medicine practitioners, taxpayer rights groups, environmentalists, criminal trial lawyers and law professors.
Organized by Larry Dodge and Don Doig, both of Helmville, Montana (population: 26; elevation 4300'), FIJA seeks to require that juries be informed of their nullification rights. Informed jury amendments have been filed as an initiative in seven states and legislation has been introduced in the Alaska state legislature.
Merely raising the issue of nullification can make prosecutors nervous, for it takes only one person aware of the right in order to hang a jury. In Washington, DC, where the concept was discussed in connection with the Marion Barry trial, a local television station reported that the US Attorney was worried that a jury might nullify the law in that case. The joke in DC was that Barry was campaigning, but only for one vote, that of a single juror. The specific charges against Barry revolved around his use of drugs and a growing number of people are coming to accept the argument that drug use or addiction should not be a criminal offense. Further many DC residents were concerned about the prosecution's heavy-handed pursuit of the mayor. Despite the refusal of courts to inform juries of their right to nullify, American juries have periodically exercised it anyway. In recent years, some peace protesters have been acquitted despite strong evidence that they violated the law. In the 19th century northern juries would refuse to convict under the fugitive slave laws. And in 1735 journalist Peter Zenger, accused of seditious libel, was acquitted by a jury that ignored the court's instructions on the law.
Those who have endorsed the right of a jury to judge both the law and the facts include Chief Justice John Jay, Samuel Chase, Dean Roscoe Pound, Learned Hand and Oliver Wendell Holmes. According to the Yale Law Journal in 1964, during the first third of the 19th century judges did inform juries of the right, forcing lawyers to argue "the law -- its interpretation and validity -- to the jury." By the latter part of the century, however, judges and state law were increasingly moving against nullification. In 1895 the US Supreme Court upheld the principle but ruled that juries were not to be informed of it by defense attorneys, nor were judges required to tell them about it. Stephen Barkan, writing in Social Problems (October 1983), noted that the attacks on nullification stemmed in part from juries acquitting strike organizers and other labor activists. And in 1892 the American Bar Review warned that jurors had "developed agrarian tendencies of an alarming character."
Today, the constitutions of only two states -- Maryland and Indiana -- clearly declare the nullification right, although two others -- Georgia and Oregon -- refer to it obliquely. The informed jury movement would like all states to require that judges instruct juries on their power to serve, in effect, as the final legislature of the land concerning the law in a particular case.
As the diverse nature of the movement suggests, many groups in this country feel the government has overstepped its power in some way and that there must be protection for the natural rights of American citizens. They are defending not only the right to protest or carry a gun or not wear seatbelts but challenging the right of the government to decide such matters without the mediating effect of a jury's judgement of fairness in a particular case.
For many liberals and progressives, who tend to be confident of the beneficent nature of government power, such a challenge may be a bit uncomfortable -- understandable in a case involving a peace protest, less appreciated if invoked by a member of the National Rifle Association. The libertarians argue that the two are of one cloth. As government intrusion in individual matters has increased, the libertarian view has gained influence, helping to tilt normal left-right divisions on their side. Libertarians, for example, have been key to the growing opposition to the barbaric Reagan-Bush war on drugs, providing some of the best analysis and advocacy available on the issue.
Libertarians are again in the lead on the nullification issue. Many progressives may be uneasy about the thought of a western jury nullifying a case involving a gun control or seatbelt law, but this unease reminds one of little discussed principles that were once considered central to being an American -- not the least of which was freedom from some government official telling you how to live your life. As the design of the modern centralized welfare state frays and becomes increasingly authoritarian, reacquaintance with some of our individualistic roots has much to recommend it.
NULLIFYING NULLIFICATION
It was nice to see the Washington Post finally giving some attention to jury nullification, even if after four months of research and interviews with more than 100 jurors, judges, defense lawyers and prosecutors, it still couldn't get the story right.
For example reporter Joan Biskupic stated, "Anyone accused of a crime in this country is entitled to a jury trial." The Constitution may say so but, in fact, this is simply not the case -- and becoming less so as politicians fiddle with legal definitions and sentencing standards in order specifically to reduce the number of persons entitled to a trial.
Biskupic also wrote: "The American custom is that jurors decide the facts of the case (whether the person did what he is accused of) and leave it to judges to interpret the law. There is no room, in other words, for jurors to say whether they think the law is a good one, though there have been a few celebrated exceptions -- notably the 18th-century acquittal of John Peter Zenger of seditious libel and the 19th-century acquittals for prosecution under the fugitive slave law."
This is a rewriting of history, one of the privileges of a reporter who works for a paper free to do so thanks to the rights of jurors upheld in the Zenger case. -- TPR 2/99
In fact, it is unlikely that a jury considering a gun control case would excuse the leader of an underground Nazi movement or a gang of bank robbers. It 1is far more likely that it would acquit the respectable rancher who simply believes that gun control represents further destruction of his paradigm of individual liberty. If so, what have we lost?
The history of jury nullification suggests there is little to fear. In those states where the concept is respected to some degree it has had minimal effect on the overall functioning of the law. Nullification has, on the other hand, played a little noted but significant role in the advance of religious and press freedom, the abolition of slavery and the building of a labor movement. Even in the face of hostility by contemporary courts, it has cropped up in political protest trials of the past few decades. And it might have surfaced more frequently absent that hostility. As one of the jurors said following the conviction of the Berrigan brothers in 1980:
We convicted them on three things, and we really didn't want to convict them on anything. But we had to, because of the way the judge said the only thing that you can use is what you get under the law... I would have loved to hold up a flag to show them we approved of what they were doing. It was very difficult for us to bring in that conviction.
The nullification principle involves the power to say no to the excesses of government, and thus serves as a final defense against tyranny. As Thomas Jefferson put it to Tom Paine in a 1789 letter, "I consider trial by jury as the only anchor ever yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution." To get in touch with the fully informed jury movement write: Fully Informed Jury Association, Box 59, Helmville MT 5984, 406-793-5550
"If a juror feels that the statute involved in any criminal offence is unfair, or that it infringes upon the defendant's natural god-given unalienable or constitutional rights, then it is his duty to affirm that the offending statute is really no law at all and that the violation of it is no crime at all, for no one is bound to obey an unjust law." -- Chief Justice Harlan F. Stone
"For more than six hundred years-- that is, since Magna Carta, in 1215--there has been no clearer principle of English or American constitutional law, than that, in criminal cases, it is not only the right and duty of juries to judge what are the facts, what is the law, and what was the moral intent of the accused; but that it is also their right, and their primary and paramount duty, to judge the justice of the law, and to hold all laws invalid, that are, in their opinion, unjust or oppressive, and all persons guiltless in violating, or resisting the execution of, such law." --Lysander Spooner, The Right of Juries
If the jury feels the law is unjust, we recognize the undisputed power of the jury to acquit, even if its verdict is contrary to the law as given by a judge, and contrary to the evidence. -- 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, US v Moylan, 1969
Every jury in the land is tampered with and falsely instructed by the judge when it is told that it must accept as the law that which has been given to them, or that they can decide only the facts of the case. -- Lord Denham, O'Connell v Rex (1884)
The jury has the power to bring in a verdict in the teeth of both the law and the facts. -- Justice Holmes, Homing v District of Columbia, 138 (1920)
When a jury acquits a defendant even though he or she clearly appears to be guilty, the acquittal conveys significant information about community attitudes and provides a guideline for future prosecutorial discretion...Because of the high acquittal rate in prohibition cases in the 1920s and early 1930s, prohibition laws could not be enforced. The repeal of these laws is traceable to the refusal of juries to convict those accused of alcohol traffic. -- Sheflin and Van Dyke, Law and Contemporary Problems, 43, No. 4, 1980
It is not only the juror's right, but his duty, to find the verdict according to his own best understanding, judgment and conscience, though in direct opposition to the directions of the court.-- John Adams
THE WIRE'S WRITERS COME OUT FOR FULL JURY RIGHTS
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If you are struggling with debt, have a below median income, Chapter 7 Bankruptcy can set you free!
Chapter 7
Liquidation Under the Bankruptcy Code
The chapter of the Bankruptcy Code providing for "liquidation," ( i.e., the sale of a debtor's nonexempt property and the distribution of the proceeds to creditors.)
a. Alternatives to Chapter 7
b. Background
c. Chapter 7 Eligibility
d. How Chapter 7 Works
e. Role of the Case Trustee
f. The Chapter 7 Discharge
Don't be frightened by the reference to "non exempt property." You can keep your car, even your house. Chapter 7 can work to free you of credit card and other unsecured debts and many people file without a lawyer. 99 percent of chapter 7 petitions are granted! Don't suffer needlessly, free yourself up!
Census Bureau Median Family Income By Family Size
(Cases Filed Between February 1, 2007, and October 14, 2007, Inclusive)
The following table provides median family income data reproduced in a format designed for ease of use in completing Bankruptcy Forms B22A and B22C. The State Median Family Income by Family Size data is available for download in MS Excel format. [XLS - 20 kb]
* For cases filed on or before March 31, 2007, add $6,300 for each individual in excess of 4.
For cases filed on or after April 1, 2007, add $6,900 for each individual in excess of 4.
Census Bureau Median Family Income By Family Size
(Cases Filed Between February 1, 2007, and October 14, 2007, Inclusive)
The following table provides median family income data reproduced in a format designed for ease of use in completing Bankruptcy Forms B22A and B22C. The State Median Family Income by Family Size data is available for download in MS Excel format. [XLS - 20 kb]
.
This may be a bit confusing but bear with it. As an example, if you live in Alabama and have four people in your family and your income is $55,424 per year based on your most recent six months of income or less you can file chapter seven and get free of your credit card and other unsecured debts. If you live in New York and live alone and make less than $48,896 you can file and get free, etc.
It's your right! If you did not get the credit through fraud you have no reason to feel bad about freeing yourself from this burden and getting started over with your life!
FAMILY SIZE
STATE
1 EARNER
2 PEOPLE
3 PEOPLE
4 PEOPLE *
Alabama
$33,709
$43,205
$48,007
$55,424
Alaska
$47,538
$62,953
$70,239
$79,033
Arizona
$38,703
$50,201
$53,241
$63,076
Arkansas
$31,788
$40,738
$45,242
$53,904
California
$44,499
$59,086
$64,118
$72,996
Colorado
$42,886
$60,782
$63,609
$72,571
Connecticut
$53,553
$65,930
$78,828
$95,183
Delaware
$46,641
$59,238
$65,373
$78,752
District of Columbia
$36,491
$55,427
$56,392
$56,392
Florida
$37,985
$46,914
$52,648
$64,280
Georgia
$37,588
$50,376
$55,293
$66,508
Hawaii
$46,769
$55,005
$69,733
$81,799
Idaho
$36,025
$47,056
$50,453
$54,165
Illinois
$42,995
$54,599
$64,184
$74,705
Indiana
$38,765
$48,841
$57,289
$66,649
Iowa
$37,265
$50,432
$58,764
$67,693
Kansas
$37,814
$50,244
$55,862
$67,026
Kentucky
$33,701
$41,560
$50,772
$56,768
Louisiana
$33,001
$40,565
$48,596
$57,752
Maine
$36,853
$47,228
$60,054
$66,899
Maryland
$50,509
$65,820
$78,211
$92,502
Massachusetts
$51,543
$60,368
$75,099
$88,179
Michigan
$42,596
$50,665
$61,052
$73,853
Minnesota
$44,147
$57,125
$70,908
$79,895
Mississippi
$29,299
$38,143
$42,964
$49,268
Missouri
$36,567
$46,246
$56,248
$65,909
Montana
$32,789
$46,005
$50,307
$57,438
Nebraska
$37,305
$50,374
$58,832
$66,893
Nevada
$40,682
$55,585
$57,303
$63,772
New Hampshire
$47,081
$57,089
$72,867
$84,155
New Jersey
$53,557
$63,357
$80,239
$93,176
New Mexico
$32,695
$44,498
$44,498
$49,781
New York
$42,896
$51,994
$62,815
$74,501
North Carolina
$34,339
$46,066
$52,160
$61,402
North Dakota
$38,146
$48,555
$58,684
$61,862
Ohio
$39,746
$47,874
$58,475
$68,890
Oklahoma
$34,072
$43,327
$48,423
$54,854
Oregon
$41,458
$50,455
$55,104
$63,946
Pennsylvania
$41,706
$48,612
$62,168
$70,863
Rhode Island
$43,805
$56,605
$67,787
$80,826
South Carolina
$33,147
$45,063
$49,846
$59,803
South Dakota
$31,605
$45,741
$56,685
$63,289
Tennessee
$34,670
$43,487
$52,380
$58,711
Texas
$34,418
$48,849
$51,678
$59,369
Utah
$42,244
$49,107
$54,948
$59,872
Vermont
$39,651
$52,008
$65,812
$73,688
Virginia
$46,601
$58,815
$69,692
$79,931
Washington
$45,516
$56,126
$60,597
$74,432
West Virginia
$34,607
$38,704
$47,613
$53,981
Wisconsin
$39,919
$52,774
$63,266
$73,359
Wyoming
$38,003
$51,498
$60,795
$64,966
* For cases filed on or before March 31, 2007, add $6,300 for each individual in excess of 4. For cases filed on or after April 1, 2007, add $6,900 for each individual in excess of 4.
COMMONWEALTH ORU.S. TERRITORY
FAMILY SIZE
1 EARNER
2 PEOPLE
3 PEOPLE
4 PEOPLE *
Guam
$33,634
$40,214
$45,828
$55,457
Northern Mariana Islands
$22,586
$22,586
$26,278
$38,650
Puerto Rico
$19,200
$19,200
$21,955
$26,788
Virgin Islands
$26,686
$32,075
$34,197
$37,467
* For cases filed on or before March 31, 2007, add $6,300 for each individual in excess of 4. For cases filed on or after April 1, 2007, add $6,900 for each individual in excess of 4.
Last Update: March 15, 2007 12:01 PM U.S. Trustee Program/Department of Justiceusdoj/ust/smm
Last Update:
March 15, 2007 12:01 PM
U.S. Trustee Program/Department of Justice
usdoj/ust/smm
Check Your Eligibility Criteria: The first step to check your eligibility of filling chapter 7 bankruptcy is to measure your average income for past six months against the median income for a family of your size in your state. Once you have calculated your income, compare it to the median income for your state If your calculated average income is less than or equal to the median income of your state, you can file under chapter 7 bankruptcy, else you need to go through another eligibility test, called "Mean Test".
Liquidation Under the Bankruptcy Code
The chapter of the Bankruptcy Code providing for "liquidation," ( i.e., the sale of a debtor's nonexempt property and the distribution of the proceeds to creditors.)
a. Alternatives to Chapter 7
b. Background
c. Chapter 7 Eligibility
d. How Chapter 7 Works
e. Role of the Case Trustee
f. The Chapter 7 Discharge
Don't be frightened by the reference to "non exempt property." You can keep your car, even your house. Chapter 7 can work to free you of credit card and other unsecured debts and many people file without a lawyer. 99 percent of chapter 7 petitions are granted! Don't suffer needlessly, free yourself up!
Census Bureau Median Family Income By Family Size
(Cases Filed Between February 1, 2007, and October 14, 2007, Inclusive)
The following table provides median family income data reproduced in a format designed for ease of use in completing Bankruptcy Forms B22A and B22C. The State Median Family Income by Family Size data is available for download in MS Excel format. [XLS - 20 kb]
* For cases filed on or before March 31, 2007, add $6,300 for each individual in excess of 4.
For cases filed on or after April 1, 2007, add $6,900 for each individual in excess of 4.
Census Bureau Median Family Income By Family Size
(Cases Filed Between February 1, 2007, and October 14, 2007, Inclusive)
The following table provides median family income data reproduced in a format designed for ease of use in completing Bankruptcy Forms B22A and B22C. The State Median Family Income by Family Size data is available for download in MS Excel format. [XLS - 20 kb]
.
This may be a bit confusing but bear with it. As an example, if you live in Alabama and have four people in your family and your income is $55,424 per year based on your most recent six months of income or less you can file chapter seven and get free of your credit card and other unsecured debts. If you live in New York and live alone and make less than $48,896 you can file and get free, etc.
It's your right! If you did not get the credit through fraud you have no reason to feel bad about freeing yourself from this burden and getting started over with your life!
FAMILY SIZE
STATE
1 EARNER
2 PEOPLE
3 PEOPLE
4 PEOPLE *
Alabama
$33,709
$43,205
$48,007
$55,424
Alaska
$47,538
$62,953
$70,239
$79,033
Arizona
$38,703
$50,201
$53,241
$63,076
Arkansas
$31,788
$40,738
$45,242
$53,904
California
$44,499
$59,086
$64,118
$72,996
Colorado
$42,886
$60,782
$63,609
$72,571
Connecticut
$53,553
$65,930
$78,828
$95,183
Delaware
$46,641
$59,238
$65,373
$78,752
District of Columbia
$36,491
$55,427
$56,392
$56,392
Florida
$37,985
$46,914
$52,648
$64,280
Georgia
$37,588
$50,376
$55,293
$66,508
Hawaii
$46,769
$55,005
$69,733
$81,799
Idaho
$36,025
$47,056
$50,453
$54,165
Illinois
$42,995
$54,599
$64,184
$74,705
Indiana
$38,765
$48,841
$57,289
$66,649
Iowa
$37,265
$50,432
$58,764
$67,693
Kansas
$37,814
$50,244
$55,862
$67,026
Kentucky
$33,701
$41,560
$50,772
$56,768
Louisiana
$33,001
$40,565
$48,596
$57,752
Maine
$36,853
$47,228
$60,054
$66,899
Maryland
$50,509
$65,820
$78,211
$92,502
Massachusetts
$51,543
$60,368
$75,099
$88,179
Michigan
$42,596
$50,665
$61,052
$73,853
Minnesota
$44,147
$57,125
$70,908
$79,895
Mississippi
$29,299
$38,143
$42,964
$49,268
Missouri
$36,567
$46,246
$56,248
$65,909
Montana
$32,789
$46,005
$50,307
$57,438
Nebraska
$37,305
$50,374
$58,832
$66,893
Nevada
$40,682
$55,585
$57,303
$63,772
New Hampshire
$47,081
$57,089
$72,867
$84,155
New Jersey
$53,557
$63,357
$80,239
$93,176
New Mexico
$32,695
$44,498
$44,498
$49,781
New York
$42,896
$51,994
$62,815
$74,501
North Carolina
$34,339
$46,066
$52,160
$61,402
North Dakota
$38,146
$48,555
$58,684
$61,862
Ohio
$39,746
$47,874
$58,475
$68,890
Oklahoma
$34,072
$43,327
$48,423
$54,854
Oregon
$41,458
$50,455
$55,104
$63,946
Pennsylvania
$41,706
$48,612
$62,168
$70,863
Rhode Island
$43,805
$56,605
$67,787
$80,826
South Carolina
$33,147
$45,063
$49,846
$59,803
South Dakota
$31,605
$45,741
$56,685
$63,289
Tennessee
$34,670
$43,487
$52,380
$58,711
Texas
$34,418
$48,849
$51,678
$59,369
Utah
$42,244
$49,107
$54,948
$59,872
Vermont
$39,651
$52,008
$65,812
$73,688
Virginia
$46,601
$58,815
$69,692
$79,931
Washington
$45,516
$56,126
$60,597
$74,432
West Virginia
$34,607
$38,704
$47,613
$53,981
Wisconsin
$39,919
$52,774
$63,266
$73,359
Wyoming
$38,003
$51,498
$60,795
$64,966
* For cases filed on or before March 31, 2007, add $6,300 for each individual in excess of 4. For cases filed on or after April 1, 2007, add $6,900 for each individual in excess of 4.
COMMONWEALTH ORU.S. TERRITORY
FAMILY SIZE
1 EARNER
2 PEOPLE
3 PEOPLE
4 PEOPLE *
Guam
$33,634
$40,214
$45,828
$55,457
Northern Mariana Islands
$22,586
$22,586
$26,278
$38,650
Puerto Rico
$19,200
$19,200
$21,955
$26,788
Virgin Islands
$26,686
$32,075
$34,197
$37,467
* For cases filed on or before March 31, 2007, add $6,300 for each individual in excess of 4. For cases filed on or after April 1, 2007, add $6,900 for each individual in excess of 4.
Last Update: March 15, 2007 12:01 PM U.S. Trustee Program/Department of Justiceusdoj/ust/smm
COMMONWEALTH OR U.S. TERRITORY |
FAMILY SIZE |
|||
1 EARNER |
2 PEOPLE |
3 PEOPLE |
4 PEOPLE * |
|
| Guam | $33,634 | $40,214 | $45,828 | $55,457 |
| Northern Mariana Islands | $22,586 | $22,586 | $26,278 | $38,650 |
| Puerto
Rico |
$19,200 | $19,200 | $21,955 | $26,788 |
| Virgin Islands | $26,686 | $32,075 | $34,197 | $37,467 |
|
* For cases filed on or before March 31, 2007, add $6,300 for each individual in excess of 4. For cases filed on or after April 1, 2007, add $6,900 for each individual in excess of 4. |
||||
March 15, 2007 12:01 PM
U.S. Trustee Program/Department of Justice
usdoj/ust/smm
I ripped this off from funkmaster five. (Hope he's okay with that).
Instead of Real Financial Reform, Obama’s Plan capitulates to Wall Street
By Prof. Michael Hudson
URL of this article: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14048
Global Research, June 22, 2009
The story is worse than just “Pres. Obama labored, and brought forth a mouse.” He is morphing into Joe Lieberman in reaching across the aisle for Republican support – and no doubt future campaign contributions from the financial sector. There also is a touch of Boris Yeltsin in sponsoring a financial “reform” disturbingly similar to what advisor Larry Summers backed in Russia – relinquishing government power to a banking elite (the notorious “Seven Bankers” in post-Soviet Russia). The Financial Regulatory Reform proposal promotes Wall Street’s “product,” debt creation, at the expense of the economy at large, and lets financial chieftains continue to self-regulate the debt industry – and by the way, to keep all their gains from the past decade’s worth of fraudulent lending, scot-free.
Confronting the wreckage of a debt crisis worse than any since the Great Depression, Mr. Obama has achieved what no Republican could have: rescuing the Bush Administration’s pro-creditor policies that fostered the Bubble Economy in the first place. “Most of the financial sector lobby community is happy with what has emerged,” the Financial Times summarized. A spokesman for the Financial Services Forum, a major Wall Street lobbying organization, called the proposals “careful and balanced.” With such endorsements, victims of predatory lending have good reason to worry. The Obama plan is just the opposite from reforming the financial system along lines that progressive Democrats and other critics have urged.
The plan’s six most fatal flaws are apparent in its preamble, which lays out a false diagnosis of the financial problem in a way that whitewashes Wall Street (in contrast to Mr. Obama’s nice televised populist speech giving verbal criticism to “culture of irresponsibility”). A false diagnosis must lead to wrong-headed cures – rarely by accident. There invariably is a financial beneficiary who gains from blind spots in a legal “reform” package.
1. Regulatory capture. Preparing the ground for future Alan Greenspan “free market” ideologues
The most serious problem is “regulatory capture”: control of the public regulatory process by the special interests being regulated. Mr. Obama’s speech introducing his reform was forthright in acknowledging that “some companies shop for the regulator of their choice … That is why, as part of these reforms, we will dismantle the Office of Thrift Supervision [OTS] and close loopholes that have allowed important institutions to cherry-pick among banking rules. We will offer only one federal banking charter, regulated by a strengthened federal supervisor.” It was the OTS, after all, that AIG and Washington Mutual chose as their regulator, as did GE Capital. The most incompetent, most ideologically opposed to serious regulation, its idea of a “free market” in practice was one free for fraud-ridden subprime lenders to do whatever they wanted.
One could go down the list of non-enforcement agencies – the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) not responding to warnings about Bernie Madoff, and the most deregulatory agency of them all: the Federal Reserve under Bubblemeister Alan Greenspan. Traditionally, the Fed has acted as lobby for the commercial banking system and indeed for Wall Street as a whole. (Its shares are owned by the commercial bank members of its system.) The Fed’s refusal to intervene to stop the subprime mortgage bubble, fraudulent lending and other elements of the Greenspan Chairmanship does not give much faith that it will take actions that will interfere with Wall Street’s money-making at the expense of the rest of the economy. Even today, the Fed is stonewalling Congress by refusing to release details on its $2 trillion “cash for trash” giveaway to favored Wall Street institutions.
It is supposed to be the Treasury’s role to represent the public interest. Unfortunately, appointing Treasury Secretaries from the ranks of Wall Street management – or giving Wall Street veto power over the nominee – undermines this mission. Elsewhere in what is supposed to be the regulatory system of public-private checks and balances, the simple tactic of underfunding the criminal justice system, the FBI, state and local prosecutors – or actively blocking them, as George Bush did – leaves the economy without adequate protection against financial fraud and predatory credit. Putting the Congressional financial committee heads up for sale to the highest campaign contributors caps the process of transforming economic democracy into oligarchy.
Britain affords a horror story that serves as a case in point. The management guru John Kay wrote a column in the Financial Times this week tracing how bank lobbyists managed to de-tooth meaningful regulation. The moral is that “self-regulation” by finance has become a universal tendency these days, and is utterly ineffective – by design!
Meaningful regulation should start with the premise that the right of banks to create credit out of thin air (actually, out of strokes on a computer keyboard, as long as bankers can find borrowers to sign IOUs) is a public utility. Mr. Obama and his Treasury do not agree. They treat credit creation as a private Wall Street monopoly, to be regulated more in name than in practice. The result is a Thatcherite giveaway to the banking sector – and as Tim Geithner noted, Wall Street institutions of all stripes, from brokerage houses to automobile lenders and retail stores are now declaring themselves “banks” in order to get government handouts to anyone who is a credit (but nothing for their debtors). This is part of the New Class War that the Bush-Obama administration has sponsored to polarize the economy between creditors and debtors.
The politically astute way to deregulate a public utility – especially in the wake of a financial crisis that has much of the population up in arms – is to shed crocodile tears over Wall Street’s “culture of irresponsibility,” as Mr. Obama did on Wednesday, and then claim that you are “centralizing” regulation to make it stronger rather than weaker. If you are going to block future bank regulation, of course you promise that your act will provide greater public oversight. Mr. Obama has tapped the Federal Reserve for this role. But this is precisely what exacerbated the Greenspan Bubble.
The problem is what has now become a tradition throughout the world, not only in the United States itself. Presidents Bush Sr., Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Mr. Obama all appointed deregulators drawn from the Wall Street’s managerial ranks or those of its lobbyists. This is the path of least political resistance in blocking meaningful regulation. All that is needed is for “regulators” to do nothing, OTS, SEC or Fed style. It is the same with the Federal Drug Administration and other regulatory agencies whose officials come from the managerial ranks of the industries to be regulated. The Japanese have a long experience in such matters. The retirement of Bank of Japan heads is called “descent from heaven”: They return to the banking sector to reap their just rewards, or at least to get a lifetime of exorbitantly paid dinner speeches.
The deregulation-by-centralization ploy peaked when Pres. George W. Bush used it to nullify attempts by state attorney generals to prosecute Countrywide Financial, Washington Mutual, Citibank and other financial crooks as criminal enterprises for making fraudulent subprime mortgage loans. The ruse Mr. Bush used to block their lawsuits was an obscure small-print rule from the 1864 National Bank Act giving Washington the power to overrule local states in bringing criminal charges. The motivation for this Civil War law was clear enough: Local governments and their courts tended to be venal and corrupt. Washington asserted its oversight so as to prosecute “wildcat banking” in an era when bankers issued their own bank notes, many of which were worth much less than their face value when their holders tried to spend them.
Pres. Bush turned this law on its head, blocking eleven state AGs from prosecuting financial fraud. Taking matters out of their hands, he assigned the complaints to the Washington national bank regulator – who refused to prosecute, claiming that fraud was all part of America’s wonderful free market. This has cost the U.S. economy over a trillion dollars so far. Washington has preferred to let the banks make their fraudulent loans, and then pay them in full (along with the financial companies they’ve victimized, but not the personal debtors of course) for their bad loans that defaulted, so as to “save the system.”
The moral is, let the fraudsters do what they want, let the appropriate congressional committee heads take enough campaign contributions from Wall Street to ensure their safe re-election, and end up using taxpayer-funded “cash for trash” swaps to make sure that crime (now rechristened as the “free market”) pays. This is what happens when a criminalized class achieves “regulatory capture.” And of course, nearly the same objective can be served by permitting financial affiliates to operate out of unregulated offshore tax-avoidance centers.
Mr. Obama’s reform does not propose repealing or qualifying this clause of the National Bank Act so as to permit any prosecutor to prosecute (but not to allow prosecutions of financial fraud to be blocked). Placing regulatory power in the Fed has the potential to sterilize any serious fraud prosecution to make an industry behave whose slogan these days should be “Frauds ‘R Us.” This is the Robert Rubin and Larry Summers-style free market – free for criminalized finance to proceed unchecked. And if Mr. Summers is to become the next Fed Chairman … well, you can guess where this will lead on the regulation/deregulatory spectrum between creditors and debtors!
2. Failure to give meaningful teeth to fraud reduction
Sound regulations against fraud are on the books, many of them from the New Deal. But as the Bubble Economy saw levels of financial fraud unprecedented since the 1920s, officials who wanted to prevent abuses found their departments un-funded. Mr. Obama’s proposal fails to address this problem. “There are … millions of Americans who signed contracts they did not always understand offered by lenders who did not always tell the truth,” he acknowledged in introducing his plan on June 17. Soft language compared to that of New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer in his heyday. Mr. Obama promised “enforcement will be the rule, not the exception.” But where is the funding for the FBI’s criminal fraud division? Where is effective consumer protection from insurance companies that don’t pay, from crooked contractors and mortgage companies using property appraisers, lawyers and collection agencies, or from stockbrokers packaging junk mortgages into junk securities? They’ve been given a fortune in recent years – and can keep it to set themselves up to make yet a new killing. It looks as if as little will be done to financial fraud as will be done to the Guantanamo torturers and the high-ups who condoned their actions.
Much attention has been given to the Consumer Financial Products Agency, whose role has been defined largely by Elizabeth Warren of the Harvard Law School. Its main aim is to enforce truth-in-lending laws on credit-card companies and mortgage lenders. (Weren’t these laws already on the books?) This is progress, but surely much more is needed. One way to make credit-card rates more economic would be for the government to provide its own rival service. After all, credit cards have become a major form of payment today. Isn’t electronic payment really a public utility? The difference is that unlike electric and gas utilities or railroads, there is no regulation to keep fees in line with economically necessary basic costs to the card issuer. It is fine to hear that one finally will be able to read clearly how much one is being exploited. But why not stop the exploitation in the first place?
Larry Kudlow said on MSNBC that he expected Congress to reject the “liberal” agency, but Republicans may simply try to make it only “advisory,” without real regulatory power. So even if Congress doesn’t kill the proposal, Mr. Obama doesn’t have to worry too much about offending his number-one donor constituency. Serious regulation over Wall Street will have about as much effect as the corporate “social responsibility” desk to which companies assign employees on their way out. At the Senate hearings on June 18, Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey asked Mr. Geithner “whether the council that would watch over the financial regulators has any power to do anything other than make recommendations. Mr. Geithner [said] they may not have gotten the balance exactly right, but he didn’t want the council to have the authority to unilaterally force changes on the regulators it oversees.”
Mr. Obama’s aim in introducing the consumer protection agency may have been to hold out hope among liberals that his plan was more than just a go-ahead for Wall Street to continue doing what it has been doing. In any case, it’s easy to de-tooth the proposals like this simply by turning implementation over to do-nothing administrators given the seal of approval by the Wall Street lobbyists who have veto power over all government regulatory positions.
To really protect consumers, why not counter extortionate credit-card practices by re-introducing anti-usury laws? They were evaded initially by companies incorporating themselves in states with “race to the bottom” laws. If Washington can override state prosecutors to prevent punishment of financial fraud, why can’t it override such ploys by the usury industry? Here’s where centralized federal law really should count for something.
3. Failure to reverse the shift to pro-creditor bankruptcy laws
The Obama plan aims at enabling Wall Street to keep on selling its product – debt, growing at exponential rates (“the magic of compound interest”) – as if finance were an “industry” like manufacturing. (In this spirit the Dow Jones Industrial Average now contains the leading financial-sector firms, although it dropped Citicorp when its shares dropped below the $1 cutoff point.) The reality is that tax favoritism for finance and debt leveraging is largely responsible for de-industrializing the economy. More and more income is being diverted away from buying goods and services in order to pay lenders on debts run up in the past. What is needed to free economies from such debt is to repeal the reversal of America’s traditional bankruptcy law – the pro-creditor reversal that Congress passed in 2005 in response to lobbying by the credit card and banking industry. Making it harder for personal debtors to go bankrupt, this law blocked courts from rolling back debt to the population’s ability to pay.
Obama’s plan fails to rectify matters. It treats the financial “services” issue in isolation from the economy’s debt problem and general economic welfare. FDIC head Sheila Bair has proposed limiting mortgage interest to 32% of the debtor’s family income. The alternative is for home foreclosures to continue, expropriating many recent buyers and also owners who have borrowed against their homes to pay off their higher-interest credit-card debt or simply to keep up their living standards that their paychecks no longer cover.
Ever since colonial times, New York State has had the Fraudulent Conveyance Law on its books. This wise legislation states that if a bank makes a loan to a borrower without knowing how the debtor can reasonably meet the terms of the loans out of normal income, the loan is deemed fraudulent and therefore null and void.
4. Failure to re-introduce Glass Steagall or otherwise limit lenders “too big to fail”
In presenting his program, Mr. Obama misrepresented a major cause of the Bubble Economy. It all seemed to be caused by the impersonal force of technology. “A regulatory regime,” he claimed, “basically crafted in the wake of a 20th century economic crisis – the Great Depression – was overwhelmed by the speed, scope, and sophistication of a 21st century global economy.” Well, not exactly. The capstone of FDR’s New Deal was the Glass-Steagall Act separating commercial banking from investment banking. This blocked the financial conflict of interest between serving retail bank customers and investment-bank profiteering.
One consequence of Glass-Steagall was to make the merger between Citibank and Travelers Insurance illegal. To save Citibank officials from suffering the consequences of breaking the law – and in the process, to open the doors to the conglomerate movement that brought down the economy – President Clinton took the advise of Messrs. Summers, Greenspan and their fellow free enterprise ideologues and signed into law the repeal of Glass-Steagall in 1999. Banks were permitted to buy insurance companies real estate and stock brokers and law firms to package junk mortgages into junked collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), insure them with junk-insurance policies written by A.I.G. and other companies taking fees for promising to pay money they did not have (they paid it out to themselves in exorbitant salaries and bonuses), and get bailed out with trillions of dollars of “taxpayer” money in the form of the Federal Reserve and Treasury’s “cash for trash” swaps.
Mr. Obama earlier made a point of bringing in Paul Volcker as an economic advisor for his reforms, and indeed the former Fed Chairman (Mr. Greenspan’s predecessor) gave some good advice: reverse the repeal of Glass-Steagall. Given Mr. Summers’ current position as advisor to Mr. Obama, people asked who would win: the reasonable Mr. Volcker, or Mr. Summers, who had urged repeal of the act in the first place? It proved to be no contest. There is no thought of breaking up the seemingly obvious conflict of interest between commercial banking and investment bank “casino capitalist” functions.
5. Failure to deter credit default swaps and other “casino capitalist” gambles
On Mr. Summers’ watch under the Clintons, the word “reform” came to mean what it meant in Russia, where he had a free hand in the 1990s: a giveaway of public assets to financial insiders. In the United States this involved stripping away the true reforms put in place from the Progressive Era to the New Deal. Among the excuses being cited is the need to free “innovation.” But financial innovation is not like that of manufacturing. Instead of raising productivity to produce more with less labor (and hence at falling prices), financial innovation aims at extracting more from debtors and from money-management clients and funds. Under free competition, for example, modern electronic technology enables banks to clear checks in a single day. But “financial engineering” has gone hand in hand with political engineering, permitting the banking monopoly to adhere to old pony express schedules – and keeping depositors’ money as “float,” that is, as an interest-free loan.
The main achievement of financial engineering has been to create mathematically opaque derivatives. As no less a speculator than George Soros has noted: “Financial engineers claimed they were reducing risks through geographic diversification: in fact they were increasing them by creating an agency problem. The agents were more interested in maximising fee income than in protecting the interests of bondholders. … Custom-made derivatives only serve to improve the profit margin of the financial engineers designing them.” Mr. Obama acknowledged: “We’ve seen the development of financial instruments, like many derivatives, so complex as to defy efforts to assess their actual value.” But they simply will be “regulated” and standardized, not banned. Mr. Soros warned that this would not go far enough to cure this problem. The only cure is to ban credit default swaps outright. But they have become Wall Street’s leading profit center. Mr. Obama’s reform does not interfere with that cash cow.
As for the “technology” of credit evaluation, modern web searching should enable any creditor or hapless buyer of packaged bank mortgages to easily check the estimated price of any home or building on-line – or any credit reporting score on individuals, for that matter. Banks have no interest in doing this when it interferes with their fraudulent rip-offs. “We’ve seen a system that allowed lenders to profit by providing loans to borrowers who would never repay,” Mr. Obama explained, “because the lender offloaded the loan, and the consequences, to someone else.” Much of today’s institutionalized financial irresponsibility indeed stems from the fact that banks today are a different kind of institution from what they were throughout history until quite recently: banks which held the mortgages they originated. The idea of “offloading” their loans based on other peoples’ misplaced trust led them to give bonuses to officers based on their loan volume without any consideration for loan quality or reality. This was Mr. Greenspan’s free market at work. It used to be called fraud, and be prosecuted.
Mr. Obama proposes that originators keep a token 5 percent on their own books. Critics point out that this hardly will deter junk-mortgage practices, and suggest that the required proportion at least be doubled or raised even further, along with blocking off-balance-sheet vehicles, especially in tax-avoidance zero-oversight offshore banking centers. In view of the almost universal condemnation of this practice, Mr. Obama’s delicate steps suggest that the plan was formulated with a view of “How little do we have to yield to popular and Congressional anger at the trillions of bailout dollars we have given to financial crooks?”
This is not real reform. Pres. Obama was elected with a mandate for change. He could use his office as a bully pulpit to propose real reform, urging that recalcitrant politicians in the pockets of the financial lobby be removed from their positions on the grounds of conflict of interest, unethical behavior and outright bribery for being the largest recipients of campaign contributions from the sectors their congressional committees are charged with regulating. Alas, America’s desire for change is far ahead of Mr. Obama’s when it comes to defending the public interest against those of his leading campaign contributors.
6. Failure to reform the tax system that has distorted the financial system to promote predatory extractive debt, not productive industrial credit
The “product” that the banking “industry” sells is debt – loans which, under today’s financial circumstances and tax favoritism for Wall Street, are extended in a way whose main effect is to inflate asset prices, not fund tangible capital formation. Rising prices for housing and commercial property, stocks and bonds, are taken as justification for yet more lending, backed by collateral being bid up in price. By loading the economy down with debt, this seeming “wealth creation” becomes a vicious circle increasing the economy’s financial carrying charge.
Mr. Obama’s “reform” plan is that it seeks to sustain this dynamic, not reverse it. The plan does not acknowledge the symbiotic relationship between fiscal and financial policy. Cutting property taxes leaves more real estate rent, monopoly rent and asset-price gains “free” to be pledged to the banks for yet larger loans – pledged to pay more interest on the rising debt taken on to buy assets being inflated by the credit bubble.
The resulting financial “enterprise” is different from industrial innovation. It consists largely of capturing congressional tax legislators so as to write small-print tax “loopholes” and more glaring tax breaks that shift the fiscal burden onto productive labor and industry. That is the essence of today’s “pay to play” democracy. Financializing the economy in this way has gone hand in hand with de-industrialization.
The most regressive tax is FICA wage withholding for Social Security and Medicare. Only wages below about $102,000 are subject to this tax, not higher incomes. And Wall Street speculators only pay a low “capital gains” rate on their trading. By shifting the tax burden onto the “real” economy, this tax shift polarizes income and wealth at the top of the economic pyramid while increasing the cost of living (taxes are a cost, after all). This squeezes family budgets and shrinks spending on goods and services. And as a result of tax subsidy for debt leveraging, industrial cash flow is diverted to pay interest and dividends rather than being reinvested in new means of production and being liable for income taxes.
More bank lending – that is, more debt – is the heart of today’s economic problem, not the solution. Finance capitalism is undercutting industrial capitalism, replacing the production of goods and services with predatory extraction of rent and interest via economic “tollbooths,” from parking meters in Chicago to roads in New Jersey. States and localities are facing fiscal shortfalls obliging them to sell off their roads, parking meters and public enterprises to buyers on credit (making their income tax exempt) who erect expensive tollbooths and extract yet more income from the shrinking “real” economy, which is being Thatcherized.
As Leona Helmsley explained, “Only the little people pay taxes.” Between debt and taxes, many people are so strapped that they must run even further into debt or suffer lower living standards. Borrowing more leads even more people into bankruptcy, subject to the 2005 law that Congress wrote to favor creditors. The economy is heading toward debt peonage as it polarizes between wealthy patrons and a work force reduced to patron-client dependency relationships.
Do we need a new beginning for meaningful financial restructuring?
Debt bubbles never survive for long. But their collapse can be the most dangerous stage of all. Mr. Obama is obliging debtors run down their lifetime savings in an attempt to carry their debt overhead. Meanwhile, investors at the top of the economic pyramid are foreclosing on the property of debtors, and “vulture funds” are looking to pick up assets on the cheap.
America’s financial problem thus requires deeper solutions than have been discussed to date. Paul Krugman in his Friday column (June 19) complained about two obvious lacunae in the Obama plan. “To live up to its own analysis, the Obama administration needs to come down harder on the rating agencies and, even more important, get much more specific about reforming the way bankers are paid.” The securities ratings agencies certainly have an inherent conflict of interest in being paid by their clients to give a review – which usually turns out to be rave AAA revues for junk securities. But beneath this problem lie much deeper ones, so it is understandable that when Mr. Geithner was asked about better regulation of the ratings agencies in his Senate testimony on Thursday, he said that this would have to wait for another day. As Mr. Obama explained: “we are proposing a set of reforms to require regulators to look not only at the safety and soundness of individual institutions, but also – for the first time – at the stability of the system as a whole.”
But this is just what is not being done. The plan is silent when it comes to the reported 25% of U.S. real estate sunk into a state of negative equity and 1/8 already I arrears heading for foreclosure as the mortgage debt attached to it exceeds its (falling) market price. Commercial real estate looks like the next big sector to topple. Debt service meanwhile is crowding out consumer spending on goods and services, shrinking the domestic market and aggravating unemployment.
The economy needs an FDR but has got the opposite. Mr. Obama promised change, but is defending the status quo as far as financial and debt trends are concerned. In due course he will discover that past trends cannot long persist, requiring the status quo to be replaced. For the time being it looks like he is simply trying to prevent losses for Wall Street by un-taxing finance and sacrificing debtor interests – the majority of Americans – to creditor interests at the top of the economic pyramid, not renewing the economy by de-leveraging. Will his historical role be to have made a failed attempt to sustain growth in America’s debt overhead? Eroding Progressive Era checks on financial dynamics has been the political and economic trend for the past thirty years. It is advisor Summers’ idea of “reform.” When he and his neoliberal cohorts had a free hand in Russia in the mid-1990s, the result was to endow a kleptocracy imposing poverty on the population at large, stripping away industrial capital even while making Russia the world’s hottest stock market for awhile. America seems to be getting a Yeltsin, not a Roosevelt.
The trends we are seeing today do not constitute industrial capitalism as classically understood. Under the euphemism of creating a “post-industrial society,” the economy is being de-industrialized, as if that were a way forward rather than a lapse back into a pre-industrial extractive economy. Mr. Obama’s financial “reform” aims at sustaining casino capitalism by rolling back a century’s worth of progressive tax and financial legislation. After his speech the DJIA rose on Thursday, mainly because most “industrials” are now financial companies, reflecting the degree to which financial engineering has replaced industrial engineering.
Banks have not done well with their credit-creating privilege. Instead of funding tangible capital investment to raise living standards, the financial system has focused on lending against property already in place (mainly land, followed by buildings, monopoly rights, and personal income). The effect is to inflate asset prices while deflating the market for goods and services, by diverting spending away from the purchase of commodities to pay debt service.
The plan has no real teeth to shape the financial environment in the happy-face way that Mr. Obama and Mr. Geithner promise. It is like the proverbial software demo version, better on paper than what turns out to be the reality. The disconnect is not accidental. Its rhetoric follows the strategy of a stage magician whose patter talk serves to divert attention away from what his hands actually are doing. Like B’rer Rabbit in the Uncle Remus story telling his captor, B’rer Fox, “Please don’t throw me in the briar patch,” the banks will complain about the Obama plan (really the Paulson Plan) to centralize financial regulation in a strengthened Federal Reserve. But of course that’s just where they want to end up, under a compliant Chairman (Mr. Summers himself?) appointed with Wall Street’s advice and consent. “Born and bred in the briar patch,” crowed B’rer Rabbit triumphantly after being thrown there. Saved from future Eliot Spitzers!
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‘Hatred turned him into a Jew’ by Gilad Atzmon
Gilad Atzmon is a renowned Jazz musician, an Istaeli living in England. He is also a prolific writer who appears on the blog Palestine Think Tank and many other venues.
I believe he is sorting out this Jewish question within himself, sort of like I am. His writing hits a sympathetic vibration here.
In an article published by the Jewish Chronicle, Observer columnist Nick Cohen argued that ‘Hatred turned him into a Jew’. Initially, I was rather amused by the revealing confession. Cohen must have a lot of hatred in him. He was one of the very few supporters of the illegal war against Iraq within the British media. He really believed that liberating the Iraqis was the way forward. Incidentally he also possesses an incredible record of Islamophobic ranting. Hence, I at first tended to interpret Cohen’s declaration as an acknowledgment that it was the loathing towards others which he finds in himself that made him into a Jew.
I was obviously wrong, Cohen was quick to clarify that it is actually other people’s hatred, specifically that of the ‘British Left’ that ‘indulges antisemitism’, which made him ‘feel Kosher’.
As we noticed many times before, it is always someone or something else that transforms the ‘innocent’, ‘atheist’, ‘cosmopolitan’, ‘secularist’, ‘egalitarian’ person into a ‘Jew’. I have previously heard Jewish leftists arguing that it was Hitler who made them into Jews, now we have Nick Cohen of the Observer who claims that it is actually the ‘Left’ that makes him ‘feel Kosher’. If it wasn’t very funny, it would be very sad, may even be tragic.
One again I find myself admitting that the more I elaborate on issues concerning contemporary Jewish Identity, the more I realise that it is actually the so-called ‘secular’, ‘enlightened’, ‘emancipated’, ‘assimilated’, ‘cosmopolitan’ Jew who provides us with a real meaningful insight into the subject of Zionism, Israeli genocidal policies, Jewish lobbying and Jewish institutional support of the Zionist crime.
Cohen’s JC article is an exemplary case study of the Zionisation of world Jewry and the transition of Jewish identity into a hawkish carrier of brutal, expansionist, murderous ideologies.
Let’s Take It From the Kosher Horse’s Mouth
“My name is Nick Cohen, and I think I’m turning into a Jew,” Cohen tells his British Jewish readers. “Despite being called ‘Cohen’, I’ve never been Jewish before. It’s not simply that I am an atheist. My Jewish friends tell me that it is hard to find an educated London Jew who is not an atheist, but that I have no connection with Jewish culture.”
For years I had been following Cohen defusing his Jewishness repeatedly. This time Cohen seems to surrender, he lets go, he’s let himself be a Jew. Yet, for some reason he insists upon untangling the notion of Jewishness, elaborating on religious perspective as if Jewishness has something to do with being observant. This tendency is rather bizarre. Cohen must be familiar enough with the subject to know that one does not have to be an observant Jew in order to consider oneself as a Jew. Unlike Islam and Christianity, Jewishness is not a belief system at all. While Muslims believe in Allah and Christians believe that Jesus is God, the Jew can believe in almost everything without ceasing to be a Jew. A Jew could believe in Marx, Bolshevism, Holocaust, secularism, democracy and even Lizards. Consequently, what makes a Jew into a Jew is the belief in ‘the Jew’, in Jewish suffering and in Jewish uniqueness
While talking to a strictly Jewish audience, Cohen tends to celebrate his ‘exceptional Jewish circumstances’ with his readers. “The Jewish side of my family is my father’s (which is not a help, I gather).” A friend pointed out me a while ago that somehow only with her Jewish friends she always happens to know where Papa’le and Mama’le are from, she always knows how the Grandparents managed to survive the big war. Cohen is apparently no different. As we launch into Cohen identity expedition we are getting familiar with Papa’le and Mama’le racial background. Cohen is also a dedicated protagonist of the kosher victim historical narrative. “My great grandparents fled from the Tsarist Empire at the time of the pogroms.” Not only did they flee, they even became communists. Indeed a common Jewish political choice at the turn of the 20th Century.
One may wonder at this stage what lead Cohen the ‘pro-war secularist atheist’, to admit that he had become a ‘Kosher’ subject after so many years of relentless denial. “My sole interest in Jewish concerns came from being a left-wing opponent of the far Right and the blood-soaked antisemitic superstitions which turned Europe into a graveyard.”
Certainly, Cohen starts to come up with the goods. We now learn that when Cohen was a ‘leftist’, so to say, it was because the left was serving the Jewish tribal interests fighting ‘far right antisemitic superstitions’.
But these days seem to have passed. According to Cohen, the Left fails to do its job, it does not work for the Jews anymore. “Today the old certainties have gone because there are two far-right movements: the white neo-Nazi parties that the Left still opposes; and the clerical fascists of radical Islam which, extraordinarily, the modern left succours and indulges.”
Seemingly, according to Cohen, the Leftists have shunned the Jews and support the clerical fascists of radical Islam. “I am not only talking about Ken Livingstone, George Galloway and their gruesome accomplices in the intelligentsia. Wider liberal society is almost as complicit.”
At this point Cohen’s list of Judeophobes is growing by the second. It is actually not only the Leftists and liberals, it’s apparently the entire world that’s leaving the Jews to face for their doomed fate. “From the broadcasters, through the liberal press, the Civil Service, the Metropolitan Police, the bench of bishops and the judiciary, antisemitism is no longer an unthinkable mental deformation.”
Cohen’s take on the subject is rather illuminating. Yet I wonder - if Cohen believes in what he says, the most rational and reasonable thing to do would be to run as far as possible away from Judaism, Jewishness and the Jews. But as it seems, Cohen is doing the opposite, he runs straight into the cage, he rushes to the shtetl as if he tries to seek shelter in a synagogue. This is indeed a very Jewish thing to do. Yet, this very behaviour deserves some intellectual attention because this exact pattern can be seen as essential to the understanding of Jewish suicidal collectivism detected in Israel and its supportive lobbies and agents.
Noticeably, when writing to Jews, Cohen allows himself to employ the most racist ideas and expressions. “As long as the conspiracy theories of the counter-enlightenment come from ideologues with dark rather than white skins, nominally liberal men and women will not speak out.” Someone should remind the Observer columnist that ideologies do not have ‘skin’ and ideologues cannot choose the colour of their skin either. Hence, referring to ideologues with dark skin is far beyond bigotry. It is racism per se. And yet, Cohen will get away with it because he is ‘Kosher’ as he himself admitted. In contemporary Britain a Dutch right-wing racist MP is deported for making a film, yet a racist can be a prominent columnist for the Observer. This is actually a good thing. It is probably the last remnant of Britain’s legendary liberalism. In the UK bigotry and racism is becoming a Jews-only territory. You might want to ask yourself why we stop a Dutch MP yet we let Melanie Philips and Nick Cohen celebrate their symptoms on paper. One possible answer is that we expect a Dutch Christian to be a Humanist, yet we allow the racially orientated tribal campaigner to be a racist bigot. We expect them to advocate wars, we expect them to refer to people’s skin and colour.
Cohen says about himself. “My experience of left-wing anti-Semitism has changed the way I think and made me, if you like, more Jewish.” While a Rabbi may be inclined to take advantage of this revelation and rush to Cohen’s dwelling, equipped with the necessary gear to kosherly modify the tip of his manhood, I may admit that I just happen to be slightly confused. What is it that Cohen refers to when claiming to be ‘more Jewish’? Is Jewishness a matter of degree or quantity? As far as I understand it, Jewishness, as opposed to Judaism (religion) and the Jews (the people), is a matter of ideology. In fact no one can really be more Jewish than Cohen. He possesses all the elementary ideological ingredients, he differentiates the value of people’s ideas based on the colour of their skin. He promotes war as a valid resolution to international problems. Yes, he may not be religious at this stage of his article. But surely most of those who follow the Jewish ideology have nothing to do with Judaism either.
Cohen is convinced that he may be able to fool some people with a minor lefty cliché statement against Israeli settlements. “Although I want to see every Israeli settlement on the West Bank dismantled, it was clear to me that when Hamas fired thousands of rockets into Israel it had declared war and had to accept the consequences.” Cohen doesn’t realise that after Gaza, we do not differentiate between the West Bank and Tel Aviv. Israel is basically a big occupied territory that is stretched over historic Palestine. The Jews-only state will have to go. It simply doesn’t have the right to exist. If it ever had a justification, it lost it a long time ago. With 94% of Israeli Jews supporting the massacre in Gaza, with Cohen advocating in favour of the Iraq war and justifying the slaughter of civilians in Gaza we are left with no other option but to expect some growing resentment towards Israel, the Jewish state and Jewish interests in general.
Interestingly enough, Cohen is already preparing his Jewish readers for the coming inevitable pogrom. “If a synagogue is attacked,” says Cohen, “I guarantee that within minutes the airwaves will be filled with insinuating voices insisting that the ‘root cause’ of the crime was a rational anger at the behaviour of Israel or the Jewish diaspora.” Cohen is probably right. Without justifying any violent act whatsoever, the reasoning behind resentment towards Israel and Jews is rational. In fact, Cohen is himself a ‘root cause’ for such hatred. Cohen, who supported the illegal war in Iraq, a war that lead to the death of 1.3 million innocent civilians and millions of refugees, should have long stood up a time ago and said: I was wrong, I was a fool, I regret it all. Cohen failed to do so. Instead, he runs back to the Ghetto and succumbs to the most radical form of Jewish tribal ideology. In favour of Cohen it must be said that at least the man is genuine and authentic. Tony Blair and George Bush do not have a community that would embrace them that warmly. Except of course the Jewish State.*
Cohen concludes his JC article stating his Judeo-centric hostile mantra. “I believe that I can see some being pushed into taking the same journey I have taken and finding their views towards Judaism and Israel softening as they realise that antisemitism helps drive the fascistic ideologies of the 21st century just as it drove the Nazism of the 20th.”
In his final paragraph, for the alleged secularist atheist and egalitarian who’s reverted to Judaism, it is not about being an ethnic Jew anymore, it is not about being a cultural Jew anymore, it is not even about being a secular tribal Jew. It is now all about ‘Judaism’. Cohen expects people out there to find their “views towards Judaism”. Seemingly, Cohen who starts his JC journey by taking issues with identity, sums it up preaching religion. Quite a substantial leap I would say. The Observer columnist who claimed to be an atheist secularist ends up taking the role of a radical messianic Rabbi admitting a homogenous bond between Jews, Judaism and Israel.
Such a declaration is actually symptomatic to the most radical Zionist within the far right Messianic school. It is no wonder Cohen is writing for the JC. Yet one may wonder how come such a Judeo-centric fundamentalist cleric still holds a regular column in the Observer. It must be that British freedom of speech again that is apparently reserved for self-loving Jews, and to them alone.
* Tel Aviv based Dan David Foundation just awarded Blair with one million dollars, an award for his “leadership on the world stage”. Indeed, not many world leaders were as committed to killing so many innocent civilians in the name of democracy. Not many world leaders agreed to recruit their armies for fighting Israeli wars.
I believe he is sorting out this Jewish question within himself, sort of like I am. His writing hits a sympathetic vibration here.
In an article published by the Jewish Chronicle, Observer columnist Nick Cohen argued that ‘Hatred turned him into a Jew’. Initially, I was rather amused by the revealing confession. Cohen must have a lot of hatred in him. He was one of the very few supporters of the illegal war against Iraq within the British media. He really believed that liberating the Iraqis was the way forward. Incidentally he also possesses an incredible record of Islamophobic ranting. Hence, I at first tended to interpret Cohen’s declaration as an acknowledgment that it was the loathing towards others which he finds in himself that made him into a Jew.
I was obviously wrong, Cohen was quick to clarify that it is actually other people’s hatred, specifically that of the ‘British Left’ that ‘indulges antisemitism’, which made him ‘feel Kosher’.
As we noticed many times before, it is always someone or something else that transforms the ‘innocent’, ‘atheist’, ‘cosmopolitan’, ‘secularist’, ‘egalitarian’ person into a ‘Jew’. I have previously heard Jewish leftists arguing that it was Hitler who made them into Jews, now we have Nick Cohen of the Observer who claims that it is actually the ‘Left’ that makes him ‘feel Kosher’. If it wasn’t very funny, it would be very sad, may even be tragic.
One again I find myself admitting that the more I elaborate on issues concerning contemporary Jewish Identity, the more I realise that it is actually the so-called ‘secular’, ‘enlightened’, ‘emancipated’, ‘assimilated’, ‘cosmopolitan’ Jew who provides us with a real meaningful insight into the subject of Zionism, Israeli genocidal policies, Jewish lobbying and Jewish institutional support of the Zionist crime.
Cohen’s JC article is an exemplary case study of the Zionisation of world Jewry and the transition of Jewish identity into a hawkish carrier of brutal, expansionist, murderous ideologies.
Let’s Take It From the Kosher Horse’s Mouth
“My name is Nick Cohen, and I think I’m turning into a Jew,” Cohen tells his British Jewish readers. “Despite being called ‘Cohen’, I’ve never been Jewish before. It’s not simply that I am an atheist. My Jewish friends tell me that it is hard to find an educated London Jew who is not an atheist, but that I have no connection with Jewish culture.”
For years I had been following Cohen defusing his Jewishness repeatedly. This time Cohen seems to surrender, he lets go, he’s let himself be a Jew. Yet, for some reason he insists upon untangling the notion of Jewishness, elaborating on religious perspective as if Jewishness has something to do with being observant. This tendency is rather bizarre. Cohen must be familiar enough with the subject to know that one does not have to be an observant Jew in order to consider oneself as a Jew. Unlike Islam and Christianity, Jewishness is not a belief system at all. While Muslims believe in Allah and Christians believe that Jesus is God, the Jew can believe in almost everything without ceasing to be a Jew. A Jew could believe in Marx, Bolshevism, Holocaust, secularism, democracy and even Lizards. Consequently, what makes a Jew into a Jew is the belief in ‘the Jew’, in Jewish suffering and in Jewish uniqueness
While talking to a strictly Jewish audience, Cohen tends to celebrate his ‘exceptional Jewish circumstances’ with his readers. “The Jewish side of my family is my father’s (which is not a help, I gather).” A friend pointed out me a while ago that somehow only with her Jewish friends she always happens to know where Papa’le and Mama’le are from, she always knows how the Grandparents managed to survive the big war. Cohen is apparently no different. As we launch into Cohen identity expedition we are getting familiar with Papa’le and Mama’le racial background. Cohen is also a dedicated protagonist of the kosher victim historical narrative. “My great grandparents fled from the Tsarist Empire at the time of the pogroms.” Not only did they flee, they even became communists. Indeed a common Jewish political choice at the turn of the 20th Century.
One may wonder at this stage what lead Cohen the ‘pro-war secularist atheist’, to admit that he had become a ‘Kosher’ subject after so many years of relentless denial. “My sole interest in Jewish concerns came from being a left-wing opponent of the far Right and the blood-soaked antisemitic superstitions which turned Europe into a graveyard.”
Certainly, Cohen starts to come up with the goods. We now learn that when Cohen was a ‘leftist’, so to say, it was because the left was serving the Jewish tribal interests fighting ‘far right antisemitic superstitions’.
But these days seem to have passed. According to Cohen, the Left fails to do its job, it does not work for the Jews anymore. “Today the old certainties have gone because there are two far-right movements: the white neo-Nazi parties that the Left still opposes; and the clerical fascists of radical Islam which, extraordinarily, the modern left succours and indulges.”
Seemingly, according to Cohen, the Leftists have shunned the Jews and support the clerical fascists of radical Islam. “I am not only talking about Ken Livingstone, George Galloway and their gruesome accomplices in the intelligentsia. Wider liberal society is almost as complicit.”
At this point Cohen’s list of Judeophobes is growing by the second. It is actually not only the Leftists and liberals, it’s apparently the entire world that’s leaving the Jews to face for their doomed fate. “From the broadcasters, through the liberal press, the Civil Service, the Metropolitan Police, the bench of bishops and the judiciary, antisemitism is no longer an unthinkable mental deformation.”
Cohen’s take on the subject is rather illuminating. Yet I wonder - if Cohen believes in what he says, the most rational and reasonable thing to do would be to run as far as possible away from Judaism, Jewishness and the Jews. But as it seems, Cohen is doing the opposite, he runs straight into the cage, he rushes to the shtetl as if he tries to seek shelter in a synagogue. This is indeed a very Jewish thing to do. Yet, this very behaviour deserves some intellectual attention because this exact pattern can be seen as essential to the understanding of Jewish suicidal collectivism detected in Israel and its supportive lobbies and agents.
Noticeably, when writing to Jews, Cohen allows himself to employ the most racist ideas and expressions. “As long as the conspiracy theories of the counter-enlightenment come from ideologues with dark rather than white skins, nominally liberal men and women will not speak out.” Someone should remind the Observer columnist that ideologies do not have ‘skin’ and ideologues cannot choose the colour of their skin either. Hence, referring to ideologues with dark skin is far beyond bigotry. It is racism per se. And yet, Cohen will get away with it because he is ‘Kosher’ as he himself admitted. In contemporary Britain a Dutch right-wing racist MP is deported for making a film, yet a racist can be a prominent columnist for the Observer. This is actually a good thing. It is probably the last remnant of Britain’s legendary liberalism. In the UK bigotry and racism is becoming a Jews-only territory. You might want to ask yourself why we stop a Dutch MP yet we let Melanie Philips and Nick Cohen celebrate their symptoms on paper. One possible answer is that we expect a Dutch Christian to be a Humanist, yet we allow the racially orientated tribal campaigner to be a racist bigot. We expect them to advocate wars, we expect them to refer to people’s skin and colour.
Cohen says about himself. “My experience of left-wing anti-Semitism has changed the way I think and made me, if you like, more Jewish.” While a Rabbi may be inclined to take advantage of this revelation and rush to Cohen’s dwelling, equipped with the necessary gear to kosherly modify the tip of his manhood, I may admit that I just happen to be slightly confused. What is it that Cohen refers to when claiming to be ‘more Jewish’? Is Jewishness a matter of degree or quantity? As far as I understand it, Jewishness, as opposed to Judaism (religion) and the Jews (the people), is a matter of ideology. In fact no one can really be more Jewish than Cohen. He possesses all the elementary ideological ingredients, he differentiates the value of people’s ideas based on the colour of their skin. He promotes war as a valid resolution to international problems. Yes, he may not be religious at this stage of his article. But surely most of those who follow the Jewish ideology have nothing to do with Judaism either.
Cohen is convinced that he may be able to fool some people with a minor lefty cliché statement against Israeli settlements. “Although I want to see every Israeli settlement on the West Bank dismantled, it was clear to me that when Hamas fired thousands of rockets into Israel it had declared war and had to accept the consequences.” Cohen doesn’t realise that after Gaza, we do not differentiate between the West Bank and Tel Aviv. Israel is basically a big occupied territory that is stretched over historic Palestine. The Jews-only state will have to go. It simply doesn’t have the right to exist. If it ever had a justification, it lost it a long time ago. With 94% of Israeli Jews supporting the massacre in Gaza, with Cohen advocating in favour of the Iraq war and justifying the slaughter of civilians in Gaza we are left with no other option but to expect some growing resentment towards Israel, the Jewish state and Jewish interests in general.
Interestingly enough, Cohen is already preparing his Jewish readers for the coming inevitable pogrom. “If a synagogue is attacked,” says Cohen, “I guarantee that within minutes the airwaves will be filled with insinuating voices insisting that the ‘root cause’ of the crime was a rational anger at the behaviour of Israel or the Jewish diaspora.” Cohen is probably right. Without justifying any violent act whatsoever, the reasoning behind resentment towards Israel and Jews is rational. In fact, Cohen is himself a ‘root cause’ for such hatred. Cohen, who supported the illegal war in Iraq, a war that lead to the death of 1.3 million innocent civilians and millions of refugees, should have long stood up a time ago and said: I was wrong, I was a fool, I regret it all. Cohen failed to do so. Instead, he runs back to the Ghetto and succumbs to the most radical form of Jewish tribal ideology. In favour of Cohen it must be said that at least the man is genuine and authentic. Tony Blair and George Bush do not have a community that would embrace them that warmly. Except of course the Jewish State.*
Cohen concludes his JC article stating his Judeo-centric hostile mantra. “I believe that I can see some being pushed into taking the same journey I have taken and finding their views towards Judaism and Israel softening as they realise that antisemitism helps drive the fascistic ideologies of the 21st century just as it drove the Nazism of the 20th.”
In his final paragraph, for the alleged secularist atheist and egalitarian who’s reverted to Judaism, it is not about being an ethnic Jew anymore, it is not about being a cultural Jew anymore, it is not even about being a secular tribal Jew. It is now all about ‘Judaism’. Cohen expects people out there to find their “views towards Judaism”. Seemingly, Cohen who starts his JC journey by taking issues with identity, sums it up preaching religion. Quite a substantial leap I would say. The Observer columnist who claimed to be an atheist secularist ends up taking the role of a radical messianic Rabbi admitting a homogenous bond between Jews, Judaism and Israel.
Such a declaration is actually symptomatic to the most radical Zionist within the far right Messianic school. It is no wonder Cohen is writing for the JC. Yet one may wonder how come such a Judeo-centric fundamentalist cleric still holds a regular column in the Observer. It must be that British freedom of speech again that is apparently reserved for self-loving Jews, and to them alone.
* Tel Aviv based Dan David Foundation just awarded Blair with one million dollars, an award for his “leadership on the world stage”. Indeed, not many world leaders were as committed to killing so many innocent civilians in the name of democracy. Not many world leaders agreed to recruit their armies for fighting Israeli wars.
Friday, June 12, 2009
F*ck the gatekeepers!
http://www.fadsmashers.com/war-of-terror.html
Snapshots from Abu Graib
How you get someone to confess to blowing up the WTC.http://www.smh.com.au/ftimages/2006/02/15/1139890772777.html
From the Telegraph
Article from Fadsmashers.com
http://www.fadsmashers.com/war-of-terror.html
THE FREEDUMB FIGHTERS
Naomi Klein
Naomi claims that governments need catastrophe in order to capitalize on the shock that ensues thereafter for the sake of securing their own greedy ambitions on the not so free market. However, in spite of how necessary she feels this is, she for some reason doesn’t think it’s so necessary (in the face of all the evidence) that governments would do it themselves. I'll repeat that... Government (the interests that run it) NEED disaster (hence disaster capitalism) to sustain the fake economy, but not so much that it would ever consider engineering threats when none naturally presented themselves. Right. They just simply wait for things to happen, and then their endless sociopathy, thirst for power and greed kicks in… OkEE!!! DO YOU REALLY THINK SHE COULD BELIEVE THAT KNOWING WHAT SHE DOES?!! GET REAL SON!!!
Naomi is the master of conspiratorial pragmatism; no one knows how to dance around the minefield quite like this silver tongued beauty. If she thinks its suspicious then why not investigate it? MAYBE ITS BECAUSE THE CULTURE AND MARKET SURROUNDING IT ISN'T BIG ENOUGH!!! (LOL!!!<<
Excerpt from the Shock doctrine
"Believers in the shock doctrine are convinced that only great rupture-a flood, a war, a terrorist attack-can generate the kind of vast, clean canvases they crave."
-N.K The Shock Doctrine p26
Translation
"So its likely those believers would orchastrate these events if they felt it was "the only" way, and it may be worth investigating if we were actually serious about what we talk about! But instead I will continue to ramble on about Milton Friedman, and executive bonuses while never addressing the underlying crime of private banking!! In fact I will encourage the oppressive system by advocating that these banks start lending more debt to you from their fiat coffers, and then get mad at them when they dont and seem revolutionary. I wont out the criminal network orchastrating the fascade in investigating 9/11 because that would prompt a real public reaction, that we are not prepared to capitalize on. This is the part of my book I didnt talk about, its called Shock jock capitalism!"
Noam Chomsky
Apart from promptly replying to emails, being 90% right most of the time and doing a fair bit to divert the rebellious youths attention away from the human element of corruption while focusing on intangible abstracts such as “the machine” or “the wealthy” unaccountable corporations, insignificant somebodies, peaceful protest and other easily tamed neo-Marxist babble, Chomsky has achieved a FAILing grade in his analysis of 9/11.
Chomsky’s premature conclusion is that US elements had no hands in the attack, because the idea (to him the idealist) is just absurd. The same guy who has spent his life documenting corruption and imperialism thinks the idea is implausible, OKEE!!! No inconsistency there whatsoever!!! On the basis of this subjective absolution the ‘professor’ has concluded that investigating any other narratives or investigating period is a complete and utter waste of time. To add to this poorly thought out and reactive statement Chomsky adds that the issue itself is entirely irrelevant; that even if rogue elements within the government were complicit if not entirely responsible, that its no big deal, (!) and clearly wouldn’t provide any valuable leads that were in anyway significant in the present day, or have any ramifications on anything else in our society. GOTCHA!
The Blowback Throwback
He claims that the facts implicating US/ Israeli special interest involvement, may distort the concept of blowback. That is, if we were to assume it was not terrorists, it would imply that there is no resistance to American foreign policy, and undermine the message that is attempting to be communicated in such events. There is no doubt legitimate acts of terrorism performed everyday, which are a desperate attempt to resist globalization, this is not to say such acts are justified. They are about as unjust as the acts that provoked them. That said, this in itself (the ‘professors’ only real point with merit), this paranoia of compromising our worldview, is hardly scientific and sufficient to not at least want another fake independent investigation... no?
Governments have been proven to commit false flag operations in the past to push forth agendas (like the incident which precipitated the Vietnam war in which Israeli/ Americans fired on their own ships!!), it is documented, declassified, it shoudlnt among any rational populous be viewed as a "far-fetched idea". To incriminate special interests should not necessarily have the effect of downplaying the concept of blowback and the impacts of globalization, this is simply fucking stupid, and it would appear does more to preserve Chomsky’s worldview and theories then it does truth.
Lastly, he believes that because the issue is past, it is thus not worth exploring, yet its ok for him to ramble on citing instances of government corruption from as far back as required to validate his own 'ism' when he feels the urge to do so.
This has to be the most pathetically, long-winded, insincere, uninformed explanation ever offered by a so called rebel. You sir disappoint me.
Howard Zinn
Howard Zinn, as with all of these individuals, has been an activist connoisseur, from WW2 hero, to anti-segregationist, to American anti-war spokesman, he has certainly made his contributions to the social justice movement. Being Jewish (like the majority of prominent American left wing spokespeople) and having a personal history with Nazism why would he not capitalize on this opportunity to incriminate the Bush nazi for this crime?
He criticizes 9/11 truth as being an irreconcilable issue, yet somewhere in his mind believes a socialist utopia can manifest out of a society in which the media (and indy media) is either monopolized or being represented by pussies who dont want to ask hard questions… right O then old boy!!!
*This interview is so multilayered in its deception, not only do they appear as if they are very bad actors, Howard Zinns hypnotic programming with his repetition that "its a distraction" and the (FAKE "real news"<<<>If you and your bestselling cohorts would invest so much as 5 minutes in exploring, and generating awareness about the issue, this may have been resolved 7 years ago. Instead you’ll spend twice the amount of time trying to rationalize why the situation isn’t worth pursuing, and just let the other insecure nutjobs capitalize on it instead, until its too fucking late, and all you can do is sell us more fucking ebooks so we can arrogantly walk around and think we have the faintest idea as to how manipulated we are!!!
Seeing as the Iraq war is “over” I guess we can stop exploring that now too as it can never be reconciled! In fact investigating anything that happened more then 5 seconds ago is a waste of time, so disregard the first part of this sentence…
*This interview is so multilayered in its deception, not only do they appear as if they are very bad actors, Howard Zinns hypnotic programming with his repetition that "its a distraction" and the (FAKE "real news"<<<>
Keith Olbermann
There isnt much to say about this guys angle on 9/11, other then that its the bottom feeder of this morally moronic bunch. Like Michael Moore, Bill Maher and John Stewart he doesnt go beyond critiquing the Bush administrations incompetency (i.e dignififying the idea that this cokehead cowboy actually did anything other then look dumb), shocking his viewers with his pretentious diatribes against Bushs IQ, protecting the Obama hope delusion as shit hits the fan in slow motion, and ashes ashes we all bow down... But its mainly the fact he buys into the Osama ordeal, thats whats naive. Anyways, all of the aforementioned people have conceded that something is fishy about 9/11 in the event itself or in its effect, (more or less) but also add:
1) THE “WE ARE TOO DUMB TO INVESTIGATE ARGUMENT”
Basically that all these intelligently, outspoken and popular people (and anybody for that matter) are completley incompetent in investigating this issue, because they are simply braindead dunces who actually cheated on their university exams and slept with thier professors to get in the highest ranking academic positions they fill today. We couldnt figure it out even if we were smart enough because I guess we would be gagged or killed and they would have to blame that on the right to fuel the phony left/ right delusion. Thats not required quite yet. If it’s because they don’t want the stigma of “conspiracy theorist” tagged to their image, then how fucking renegade are they anyway? Come on, I mean… at least attack the neocons… they are only the tip of the iceberg, at least give us a show!!! FAAAAAAAAAACK SMIGGENS!!!
2) THE “THAT’S OLD NEWS ARGUMENT”
That the issue is itself a red herring not worth pursuing, and takes us away from things happening right now which we will apply this SAME REASONING TO IN THE NEXT 5 YEARS??? Come again? That is in a few years, the Iraq war and torture will be non-issues, both of which began immediately post 9/11… (which since 2003, when Chomsky published a book regurgitating the official narrative on the topic, has been a non-issue).
All these people contend that the issue of 9/11 is a red herring, and a distraction away from things occurring right now.
Let’s assess the logic: 1) Things that happened in the past are less relevant then things happening now 2) Even though this is how all criminal cases work! 3) Therefore we should focus on more relevant things happening only now, because the future has no relationship with the past.
We cannot research the past and the present concurrently because we cant chew gum and walk at the same time. If there were criminal elements then, its likely there are still criminal elements now, unless we are naïve idiots that is!
How the fuck is that even a person with a 3rd grade intellect can comprehend the significance of 9/11, yet these refined academics need the causal relationship explained as if they were in special ed…
3) THE “CONSPIRACY THEORIES ARE A LIABILITY ARGUMENT”
Translates into I enjoy my career and am content not overstepping my bounds and saying what needs to be said, and will gladly delegate this activity to some other group we will deem as a liability. If it is such a liability... then WHY is it such a liability!!!
These people have a lot invested in the left/right polarity. What people don’t understand is that no matter where you find a rebel, you will find ego. The notion that the rebel is somehow selfless, and utilitarian rarely hits the mark, although this quality may be something that is aspired to. The ego is in the persona; ‘the hero’, sent there to slay the fire breathing corporate interests who’s incinerating the slaves. The nature of the rebel is to strive for perfection, if ones viewpoint comes under threat, they have to acknowledge an imperfection, and invalidate their righteous self-image. It comes down to not wanting to be proved wrong.
4) THE “ITS LIKE JFK ARGUMENT”
When someone compares the incident of JFK to 9/11, tell them that you dont want to be their friend anymore. Im kidding... but really... One guy, who was paid to lie to the people (politician/ JFK) being killed, doesn’t approach the scale and importance of the events of 9/11, other then instating the left as morally superior. I believe that this is a subversive tactic as most view the JFK thing as no more then a American legend, or at best a nifty motion picture. When we relate 9/11 to JFK, we presume that the two are at par for their mysteriousness. BUMP THAT SHIT FROM YOUR MIND!!! The amount of evidence surrounding the 9/11 attacks is so overwhelming you can see it from fucking space!
The fundamental difference is that JFK's assassination didn't aid in the fulfillment of some agenda, and was likely and inconvenience for the powers that be, if not to provide an example to JFK's successors as to who was really in charge.
5) THE "THEY ARE TOO DUMB TOO PULL IT OFF ARGUMENT"
The made atomic bombs, private banking, vaccines, laser weapons, and facebook. They are not stupid.
Summary
What are these people hiding from? Why would they allow the right-wing groups to commandeer the 9/11 truth movement, and risk being criticized for not doing so? Whose interest is being served by these people (whether directly or indirectly)? Is it because they see it as a threat to their prized notion of government intervention, in that if government proved to be so easily corrupted, that this would compromise the leftist ideologies? It wouldn’t, because if anything it would be special interests (criminals) within the government, and not the institution itself which bore the blame. People of such intellectual sophistication should know that... If they don’t then WTF smiggens!!! HEY I KNOW!!! LETS JUST DEMAND MORE SHITTY JOBS, TO SAVE UP TO BUY DUMB SHIT AND TWEET WITH ONE ANOTHER ON HUGE FUCK YOU LCD SCREENS!!!! WOULDNT THAT BE NEAT!!!
Is it because they risked being blackballed by the media, like anyone else who has expressed similar concerns (with the exception of all the so called truther shills you are going to see a lot more off soon, preaching less indicting truths, making TV shows about the 9/11 conspiracy and trying to sell you more T-shirts while they prepare to give you 9/11 commission report 2.0). what has been the consequence of their works in social justice, asides from whatever little crumb the establishment would have given us anyway? What’s relevant though is that these outspoken, highly acclaimed, academic powerhouses won’t touch the issue with a ten foot pole. Instead they insist we must focus solely on the future and remain completely ignorant to the socio-historical progression of events that shaped the world we live in right now. This scientific negligence could not be more profound!!! They are exhibiting the same attitude and depth of analyis as their arch rivals (the washington generals) in the manner with which they address this issue. This can not be emphasized enough!!! What’s more, and perhaps the most fundamental contradiction, is that if they felt this issue was fishy (like they admi), why not use their socio-political superstardom to bring much needed attention to the issue, so it could be resolved more quickly, freeing up more time to gab on endlessly about the morality of torture, and other New York Times bestsellers…
A Chomskyite talking to a CIA operative
LEFTY- “IF IT WASN'T OSAMA WHO WAS IT THEN??”
OPERATIVE-“Oh... was some other patsy we tortured for 5 years, and convicted in a kangaroo court in another country, and oh yeah no press coverage… sorry… our bad”
LEFTY-“Oh phew, I'm glad! For a second there I actually thought that criminal elements of the government that rules us all with ease were the ones who told the military not to intervene and blow up skyscrapers, which among many others housed the central intelligence agency! Nope, these schizotypal fantasies were but figments of our own imagination, planted their by our own righteous indignation and unconscious envy of elitist power!”
OPERATIVE- “Hey its no problem, we’ve been doing this for many years!”
LEFTY- “Thanks bro… I mean… big bro!!! I am content that no further explanation or investigation is required and I can now continue rambling on about Blackwater, republicans, banker bonuses and anything else that will steer attention away from the actual criminal elements orchestrating this facade, while selling lots of books and gaining worldwide acclaim!!!”
THIS IS TO BE ACCEPTED AS OUR SOCIETIES HIGHPOINT OF INDEPENDENT THOUGHT... THESE ARE THE PEOPLE WE HAVE PASSIVELY PERCEIVED AS THE FRONTLINE CRITICS AND PROTECTORS OF OUR FREEDUMB, IT IS THEIR CRITICISM THAT SETS THE STANDARD FOR MAINSTREAM INDEPENDENT THOUGHT, AND IF THEY REFUSE TO ADDRESS ONE OF THE MOST SIGNIFICANT SCAMS OF THE 21st CENTURY THEN THAT IS (IN A RATIONAL WORLD) in IN ITSELF SOMETHING WORTHY OF INVESTIGATION. WHY DONT THEY JUST HELP PEOPLE BLOW THE CASE WIDE OPEN AND GET TO THE SOURCE OF THE PROBLEM ALREADY??? BECAUSE THEY COULD!!!
Everyone on the left is dodging an attempt to strike a REAL blow to their nemesis Neocons that they have for so long worked to villify? Why? Maybe, (just maybe) its because this whole thing is a fking I L L U S I O N….
9/11 Activist Leaders Support the World for 9/11 Truth Petition Posted on June 11, 2009
http://world911truth.org/
World for 9/11 Truth | W9T.org
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Official Release: 9/11 Activist Leaders Support the World for 9/11 Truth Petition Posted on June 11, 2009 by JF Ranger
Today, one month after the initial Beta launch of this website, and three months before the eight and dark anniversary of the World Trade Center attacks, we are proud to officially release our worldwide petition for a new and independent investigation into the 9/11 events.
We are very proud to also announce the important support we received from the below prominent 9/11 Truth activists.
Richard Gage, AIA, founder and leader of Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth
“World for 9/11 Truth has a broad reach and appeal that I hope will quickly draw in massive numbers of people from all over the planet – all demanding a new WTC investigation.”
— Richard Gage, AIA
Official Website:
http://ae911truth.org
Prof. David Ray Griffin
“The World for 9/11 Truth petition is something that should have been created long ago. Thanks to you for creating it now. I support the petition with enthusiasm.”
— David Ray Griffin
Official Website:
http://davidraygriffin.com/
Steven E. Jones, Emeritus Professor of Physics, Brigham Young University
“I have visited your site and found it very informative and user-friendly. I support the NYC
CAN initiative, to which I have contributed, and I support your petition which I have signed.
I completely agree with this lofty yet achievable goal stated in your petition, seeking ‘a truly independent and public investigation with subpoena power in order to uncover the full truth surrounding the events of 9/11/01 - specifically the collapse of the World Trade Center Towers and Building 7.’ ”
— Steven E. Jones, Emeritus Professor of Physics
Annie Machon, MI5 Whistleblower and 9/11 Truth Activist
“9/11 continues to affect us all. It has been used as the pretext for the unending ‘war on terror’, illegal wars in the Middle East, and the erosion of our civil rights and traditional freedoms in our own countries.
Yet there is a mountain of evidence from credible experts around the world that contradicts the official account of 9/11 . Many politicians, architects, academics, engineers, intelligence whistleblowers, pilots, firefighters and government officials now demand an new enquiry. In the interests of justice for the victims and first responders, and the protection of democracy, we should all support this call.”
— Annie Machon, MI5 whistleblower and 9/11 Truth activist
Official Website:
http://anniemachon.com/
If you are a prominent 9/11 Truth activist and wish to endorse our initiative publicly, please contact us.
We are calling on international governments to support our petition and to pressure the Obama administration for a new independent investigation.
We are calling on journalists from around the world — especially the U.S. journalists — to break the silence and to fully investigate these tragic events. This is your duty. Why is it that a lot of TV show hosts or journalists work hard to make the 9/11 truth movement look bad and “anti-patriotic”, but never had the guts to show WTC Building 7 collapse in 6.5 seconds on TV? You had 8 years to do it. Or more recently, to publicly investigate the unignited explosive residues of nano-thermite in the WTC dust. Stop this manufactured blackout.
We are also calling on the military personnel, the intel officers, and police forces from around the world to support our call for a new investigation. Join your voice to the 41 U.S. Counter-Terrorism and Intelligence Agency Veterans who challenge the official account of 9/11 .
We are demanding every citizen of every country who doubts the Bush administration version of 9/11, to unite and sign our petition — and to spread it far and wide.
It is our responsibility to stand up and ask for a new independent investigation. We must stop supporting the empty concept called “war on terrorism” and the laws that erode our freedoms, based on the official and faulted conspiracy theory of the 9/11 Commission — which didn’t even mention the collapse of Building 7.
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty or safety”
— Benjamin Franklin, one of the USA Founding Fathers
Finally, we would like to dedicate our final words to President Barack Obama.
Millions of people from around the world demanding a new investigation is not something we can deny. It is not an ‘opinion’ to be debated. It’s a fact we must deal with. The real question is, are you capable of looking into the scientific and forensic evidence of controlled-demolition of the Twin Towers and Building 7? Will you defend and support a fair justice process of a new independent investigation, or will you sweep this file under the carpet like you are doing with the war crime accusations against the Bush administration for torture?
We need to bring those who are responsible for these events to justice, and we certainly do not support the use of torture to produce false confessions in the process.
Lest we forget, the commission was only set up because of pressure from 9/11 victim families, and over the stonewalling objections of the Bush administration — 441 days after the attacks. They didn’t want an independent investigation at all, and when one was forced on them, this same administration ironically chose Henry Kissinger to head it. This scandal is well explained in the important documentary “9/11 Press for Truth”. Mr. Kissinger had to resign due to conflict of interests and was replaced by Philip Zelikow, which was another huge scandal due to his implications in both the George H. W. Bush and the George W. Bush administrations. He never resigned even when pressed by the family members.
If a person was shot in front of the World Trade Center, there would have been more of an urgent inquiry into that killing than was accorded the murder of thousands of people in broad daylight. There would have been a trial, witnesses giving sworn testimony, evidence presented in public for anyone interested to review and discern. Where are the Pentagon tapes?
This petition was launched in the memory of those who have fallen before, during, and after 9/11/2001, of those who still suffer from it every day, and in the name of the 9/11 worldwide activists.
For justice and peace.
World for 9/11 Truth Team
Note: You may publish this News Release anywhere you want, and link back to us.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Official Release: 9/11 Activist Leaders Support the World for 9/11 Truth Petition Posted on June 11, 2009 by JF Ranger
Today, one month after the initial Beta launch of this website, and three months before the eight and dark anniversary of the World Trade Center attacks, we are proud to officially release our worldwide petition for a new and independent investigation into the 9/11 events.
We are very proud to also announce the important support we received from the below prominent 9/11 Truth activists.
Richard Gage, AIA, founder and leader of Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth
“World for 9/11 Truth has a broad reach and appeal that I hope will quickly draw in massive numbers of people from all over the planet – all demanding a new WTC investigation.”
— Richard Gage, AIA
Official Website:
http://ae911truth.org
Prof. David Ray Griffin
“The World for 9/11 Truth petition is something that should have been created long ago. Thanks to you for creating it now. I support the petition with enthusiasm.”
— David Ray Griffin
Official Website:
http://davidraygriffin.com/
Steven E. Jones, Emeritus Professor of Physics, Brigham Young University
“I have visited your site and found it very informative and user-friendly. I support the NYC
CAN initiative, to which I have contributed, and I support your petition which I have signed.I completely agree with this lofty yet achievable goal stated in your petition, seeking ‘a truly independent and public investigation with subpoena power in order to uncover the full truth surrounding the events of 9/11/01 - specifically the collapse of the World Trade Center Towers and Building 7.’ ”
— Steven E. Jones, Emeritus Professor of Physics
Annie Machon, MI5 Whistleblower and 9/11 Truth Activist
“9/11 continues to affect us all. It has been used as the pretext for the unending ‘war on terror’, illegal wars in the Middle East, and the erosion of our civil rights and traditional freedoms in our own countries.
Yet there is a mountain of evidence from credible experts around the world that contradicts the official account of 9/11 . Many politicians, architects, academics, engineers, intelligence whistleblowers, pilots, firefighters and government officials now demand an new enquiry. In the interests of justice for the victims and first responders, and the protection of democracy, we should all support this call.”
— Annie Machon, MI5 whistleblower and 9/11 Truth activist
Official Website:
http://anniemachon.com/
If you are a prominent 9/11 Truth activist and wish to endorse our initiative publicly, please contact us.
We are calling on international governments to support our petition and to pressure the Obama administration for a new independent investigation.
We are calling on journalists from around the world — especially the U.S. journalists — to break the silence and to fully investigate these tragic events. This is your duty. Why is it that a lot of TV show hosts or journalists work hard to make the 9/11 truth movement look bad and “anti-patriotic”, but never had the guts to show WTC Building 7 collapse in 6.5 seconds on TV? You had 8 years to do it. Or more recently, to publicly investigate the unignited explosive residues of nano-thermite in the WTC dust. Stop this manufactured blackout.
We are also calling on the military personnel, the intel officers, and police forces from around the world to support our call for a new investigation. Join your voice to the 41 U.S. Counter-Terrorism and Intelligence Agency Veterans who challenge the official account of 9/11 .
We are demanding every citizen of every country who doubts the Bush administration version of 9/11, to unite and sign our petition — and to spread it far and wide.
It is our responsibility to stand up and ask for a new independent investigation. We must stop supporting the empty concept called “war on terrorism” and the laws that erode our freedoms, based on the official and faulted conspiracy theory of the 9/11 Commission — which didn’t even mention the collapse of Building 7.
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty or safety”
— Benjamin Franklin, one of the USA Founding Fathers
Finally, we would like to dedicate our final words to President Barack Obama.
Millions of people from around the world demanding a new investigation is not something we can deny. It is not an ‘opinion’ to be debated. It’s a fact we must deal with. The real question is, are you capable of looking into the scientific and forensic evidence of controlled-demolition of the Twin Towers and Building 7? Will you defend and support a fair justice process of a new independent investigation, or will you sweep this file under the carpet like you are doing with the war crime accusations against the Bush administration for torture?
We need to bring those who are responsible for these events to justice, and we certainly do not support the use of torture to produce false confessions in the process.
Lest we forget, the commission was only set up because of pressure from 9/11 victim families, and over the stonewalling objections of the Bush administration — 441 days after the attacks. They didn’t want an independent investigation at all, and when one was forced on them, this same administration ironically chose Henry Kissinger to head it. This scandal is well explained in the important documentary “9/11 Press for Truth”. Mr. Kissinger had to resign due to conflict of interests and was replaced by Philip Zelikow, which was another huge scandal due to his implications in both the George H. W. Bush and the George W. Bush administrations. He never resigned even when pressed by the family members.
If a person was shot in front of the World Trade Center, there would have been more of an urgent inquiry into that killing than was accorded the murder of thousands of people in broad daylight. There would have been a trial, witnesses giving sworn testimony, evidence presented in public for anyone interested to review and discern. Where are the Pentagon tapes?
This petition was launched in the memory of those who have fallen before, during, and after 9/11/2001, of those who still suffer from it every day, and in the name of the 9/11 worldwide activists.
For justice and peace.
World for 9/11 Truth Team
Note: You may publish this News Release anywhere you want, and link back to us.
Vice President Biden is confronted with evidence of criminal demolitions on 9/11/01
PDF of paper handed to Biden
http://www.bentham-open.org/pages/con...
After the last words were spoken, it was obvious that the press would not have an opportunity to ask questions, so Jeremy and Bruno moved quickly, crammed against the wall, toward the podium in an effort to create an opportunity to ask a question. We were at an advantage with our hand held cameras, and we actually found ourselves right next to Biden as he moved chairs aside to fulfill requests for photos with residents in attendance. The moment generated many smiles and laughter, and genuine joy could be seen in the faces of all the residents. Biden stood and addressed the residents, and the instant that the photo op was finished, Jeremy engaged him: Vice-President Biden, Im Jeremy Rothe-Kushel with WACLA Media. Biden said, "If I had your hair, I would be President!" Jeremy couldnt disagree with that and offered up that Biden could have some since there was enough to go around. Then it was time to get serious and Jeremy jumped right into the preliminary part of his question.
It seems like with the kind of work that Esparanza and communities around the world are doing in terms of rejuvenating themselves, we could all rejuvenate our communities. So, I want to ask you about the role, the foundational role, [that] restoring the rule of law has in terms of rejuvenating our economy because there was a recent scientific paper that came out, I dont know if you know about it, but it basically is conclusive that the World Trade Center was blown up by very high, advanced explosives and it should have been and continue to be the very highest news story right now. So, my question to you is, when are you and President Obama going to ask the Department of Justice to start a criminal investigation in terms of who produced this advanced nano-thermite and who put it in the World Trade Center?
The space had gone silent, and every single person, including the press, the residents, the politicians and the Secret Service were listening intently to Jeremy's question, and they all could not help but witness Biden's discomfort and his loss for words. At this point Biden asked to see the report and took it to into his hands to look at it.
With the paper in the Vice-Presidents hands, Jeremy finished up the question by asking: And if you all are not going to do that, is it possible for We the American People to trust you with our economy if we cant trust you with restoring the rule of law? Biden, obviously caught in an awkward moment, handed the scientific paper back to Jeremy, and said "Yes," then said thank you to everybody, and quickly turned to leave. While leaving the scene, offered up a little bit more in terms of his ambiguous answer. That its possible to trust---you can trust us.
Unsatisfied with the evasiveness and ambiguity of the Vice Presidents answer, Jeremy continued to call out to Biden, asking him to clarify his position in regards to the 9/11 cover-up, but Biden did not clarify his position any further. Are you going to do an investigation? Sir, are you part of the treasonous cover-up of 9/11 or are you going to help clear this up? Vice President Biden, this is about treason under Article III, Section 3 of the Constitution.
Today we managed to get the only question asked, and every single person present walked away from that event with Jeremy's question about scientific proof for military grade explosives used in the destruction of the Twin Towers on their mind. On our way out, a reporter complained to Jeremy that "it doesn't matter what story you are after you should always keep it with the agenda of the moment," to which Bruno's pleasant response was, "When is 9-11 ever the agenda of the moment?" The reporter bowed his head and walked away.
As we stood in the street, smiles on our faces for having just had an intense experience of engaging high rank politicians about 9-11 and treason, the same Secret Service agent we had interacted with before the press conference came walking out. He smiled and pointed at us, "Great work guys!" then he saluted us! Yes, a Secret Service agent saluted us for asking the Vice President a hard question about scientific proof of the controlled demolition of the towers on 9-11. Bruno called out to him "Thank you! You did a great job running a smooth operation!"
http://www.bentham-open.org/pages/con...
After the last words were spoken, it was obvious that the press would not have an opportunity to ask questions, so Jeremy and Bruno moved quickly, crammed against the wall, toward the podium in an effort to create an opportunity to ask a question. We were at an advantage with our hand held cameras, and we actually found ourselves right next to Biden as he moved chairs aside to fulfill requests for photos with residents in attendance. The moment generated many smiles and laughter, and genuine joy could be seen in the faces of all the residents. Biden stood and addressed the residents, and the instant that the photo op was finished, Jeremy engaged him: Vice-President Biden, Im Jeremy Rothe-Kushel with WACLA Media. Biden said, "If I had your hair, I would be President!" Jeremy couldnt disagree with that and offered up that Biden could have some since there was enough to go around. Then it was time to get serious and Jeremy jumped right into the preliminary part of his question.
It seems like with the kind of work that Esparanza and communities around the world are doing in terms of rejuvenating themselves, we could all rejuvenate our communities. So, I want to ask you about the role, the foundational role, [that] restoring the rule of law has in terms of rejuvenating our economy because there was a recent scientific paper that came out, I dont know if you know about it, but it basically is conclusive that the World Trade Center was blown up by very high, advanced explosives and it should have been and continue to be the very highest news story right now. So, my question to you is, when are you and President Obama going to ask the Department of Justice to start a criminal investigation in terms of who produced this advanced nano-thermite and who put it in the World Trade Center?
The space had gone silent, and every single person, including the press, the residents, the politicians and the Secret Service were listening intently to Jeremy's question, and they all could not help but witness Biden's discomfort and his loss for words. At this point Biden asked to see the report and took it to into his hands to look at it.
With the paper in the Vice-Presidents hands, Jeremy finished up the question by asking: And if you all are not going to do that, is it possible for We the American People to trust you with our economy if we cant trust you with restoring the rule of law? Biden, obviously caught in an awkward moment, handed the scientific paper back to Jeremy, and said "Yes," then said thank you to everybody, and quickly turned to leave. While leaving the scene, offered up a little bit more in terms of his ambiguous answer. That its possible to trust---you can trust us.
Unsatisfied with the evasiveness and ambiguity of the Vice Presidents answer, Jeremy continued to call out to Biden, asking him to clarify his position in regards to the 9/11 cover-up, but Biden did not clarify his position any further. Are you going to do an investigation? Sir, are you part of the treasonous cover-up of 9/11 or are you going to help clear this up? Vice President Biden, this is about treason under Article III, Section 3 of the Constitution.
Today we managed to get the only question asked, and every single person present walked away from that event with Jeremy's question about scientific proof for military grade explosives used in the destruction of the Twin Towers on their mind. On our way out, a reporter complained to Jeremy that "it doesn't matter what story you are after you should always keep it with the agenda of the moment," to which Bruno's pleasant response was, "When is 9-11 ever the agenda of the moment?" The reporter bowed his head and walked away.
As we stood in the street, smiles on our faces for having just had an intense experience of engaging high rank politicians about 9-11 and treason, the same Secret Service agent we had interacted with before the press conference came walking out. He smiled and pointed at us, "Great work guys!" then he saluted us! Yes, a Secret Service agent saluted us for asking the Vice President a hard question about scientific proof of the controlled demolition of the towers on 9-11. Bruno called out to him "Thank you! You did a great job running a smooth operation!"
Obama Owns the US Peace Movement, Makes War
A B1-B bomber delivers a 2,000 lb bomb upon alleged Taliban positions in the village of Yatimchay, Helmand, in support of an assault by British Royal Fusillers during Operation Mar Lew.President Obama is killing more and moer women and children in Afghanistan, no matter that the stated goal of Tillman murder case liar and Special Forces honcho General McChrystal says according to Prof Marc W. Herold in this article from Global Research.ca.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=13957
Hey Hey BHO How Many Kids Have You Killed Today?
Monday, June 08, 2009
A dialogue with PhilOssifer, a follower of Lyndon Larouche.
PhilOssifer is an Internet handle used by one or more than one person who appears to be affiliated with the Lyndon Larouche movement. Phil decided to open a dialogue in response to a post I did about the Larouche movement:
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Larouche's wild predictions: Not Obama, Not Clinton, Not McCain But Bloomberg IS (Was) The "Predetermined" Next President
The dialogue with PhilOssifer appears in the comments associated with that post. Notice how and why Phil decided to cut and run. I don't count myself an intellectual or Internet heavyweight. This blog is a self indulgence these days, I know. It had its day for a while when it was getting hundreds of daily reads, now it gets but a few each day. Back when I questioned the Holocaust and declared here that I wanted no part of any "right of return" to Israhell people looked me up. That was then.
http://search.yahoo.com/search?ei=utf-8&fr=slv8-yie8&p=fat%20old%20jewish%2c%20right%20of%20return&type=
In my last comment to Phil I say that I am trying not to be a Jew and that I want to assimilate into the human race (among other things.)
I admire Phil. He's dedicated to a cause, I'm sure he is self sacrificing and had to negate his own ego and subordinate himself to the Larouche movement. There is a good side to self negation, but if it's squandered it's something of a tragedy. Me. at my age, I doubt I am able to take any leaps of faith, to suspend disbelief and become a member of a faith. I admire really religious people, especially those whose religion isn't about getting rich, being prosperous or the Federal Reserve prime interst rate.
But I think evolution is real. I know the world is very much older than 6,000 years. I eat pork and shell fish. (The ethics of eating creatures troubles me. I probably should stop doing that.)
I believe in God but can't accept the Bible or other Holy books I know of as being Absolute Truth. I admire the teachings of Jesus but wonder if such a man really ever lived. That's my problem.
Some time later I'm going to write about the many different kinds of Jews there are, why I have been one and why I am trying not to be one any more.
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Larouche's wild predictions: Not Obama, Not Clinton, Not McCain But Bloomberg IS (Was) The "Predetermined" Next President
The dialogue with PhilOssifer appears in the comments associated with that post. Notice how and why Phil decided to cut and run. I don't count myself an intellectual or Internet heavyweight. This blog is a self indulgence these days, I know. It had its day for a while when it was getting hundreds of daily reads, now it gets but a few each day. Back when I questioned the Holocaust and declared here that I wanted no part of any "right of return" to Israhell people looked me up. That was then.
http://search.yahoo.com/search?ei=utf-8&fr=slv8-yie8&p=fat%20old%20jewish%2c%20right%20of%20return&type=
In my last comment to Phil I say that I am trying not to be a Jew and that I want to assimilate into the human race (among other things.)
I admire Phil. He's dedicated to a cause, I'm sure he is self sacrificing and had to negate his own ego and subordinate himself to the Larouche movement. There is a good side to self negation, but if it's squandered it's something of a tragedy. Me. at my age, I doubt I am able to take any leaps of faith, to suspend disbelief and become a member of a faith. I admire really religious people, especially those whose religion isn't about getting rich, being prosperous or the Federal Reserve prime interst rate.
But I think evolution is real. I know the world is very much older than 6,000 years. I eat pork and shell fish. (The ethics of eating creatures troubles me. I probably should stop doing that.)
I believe in God but can't accept the Bible or other Holy books I know of as being Absolute Truth. I admire the teachings of Jesus but wonder if such a man really ever lived. That's my problem.
Some time later I'm going to write about the many different kinds of Jews there are, why I have been one and why I am trying not to be one any more.
Thursday, June 04, 2009
Cuba and Democracy
The organization of American States just voted to reinvite Cuba into its ranks. In 1962, the OAS was a collection of puppet governments beholden to the United States. In the United States at that time a majority of African American citizens were denied the legal right to vote, marriage between people of different races was illegal in the states where most Black people lived, the Ku Klux Klan was considered to be a mainstream organization in one third of the country and "phoniness" was as in "as phony as a free election in Alabama."
JKF got the votes of dead Chicagoans while Nixon got the votes of dead people in the Republican dominated downstate counties of Illinois. Millions of Blacks who would have voted for Kennedy in the states of the Old slavocracy of course were barred from the ballot box. This is the country that demanded Cuba be expelled from the OAS for not being democratic.
To the last minute, the US still maintained that Cuba had to move towards it's style of "democracy" before being reinvited to the OAS. This is ironic in that nowhere in the Constitution or the Declaration of Independance are the United States self described as being "democratic." It's also ironic that it's in the US that two consecutive elections were stolen by the machine around the imbecile George Bush, that the US set up a torture center on occupied Cuban territory where people who were not even charged with any crime are still being held (if our hopes and our President's words are in fact the truth, these detainees at least are not being tortured any longer.)
Cuba actually has free elections, and it is a democracy where money doesn't talk, swear or rule and over 90 percent of the people participate.
The following article is a bit dated, it regards Cuba's 2007 elections but it deserves being passed around today because of its clarification of Cuba's democratic reality:
Cuba's Secret Elections
One of the best-kept media secrets about Cuba is that the country holds regularly scheduled elections and that the Communist Party has nothing to do with the candidate selection.
Voter registration is automatic for all citizens reaching sixteen years of age, unlike many countries where getting on the voter lists can be a difficult process for some sectors of the population.
Another surprise to those unfamiliar with the Cuban electoral system is that money is not the driving force, a refreshing difference from the dance of dollars and unethical practices that characterize campaigns throughout a continent where winning public office can be highly profitable.
Cuba does not claim to have a perfect electoral system but defends it as being more voter-friendly than others. As in most countries, the electoral law is subject to constitutional amendments, like occurred in 1992, when it was decided that provincial delegates and national parliament members should be elected by voters just like local representatives.
Those standing for election on the island are neither nominated because of their personal wealth nor for being the best fund-raisers. Neither do they end up on corporate boards after leaving office as a payback for bending to special interest groups. The concept of a paid politician is absent in Cuba and even the national parliament representatives derive no financial compensation for their civic work.
Back in the 19th century, Cuban national hero Jose Marti was quoted as saying: "La Patria es ara, no pedestal" -- the homeland is an altar, not a pedestal. His statement symbolizes the model for public service on the island since the 1959 revolution.
Anyone Can Nominate, Anyone Can be Nominated
Candidates in each of the 15,097 electoral districts located in the 169 municipalities were chosen at open neighbourhood assemblies. All members of the electorate have the right to nominate a candidate or be picked to run for office, a unique feature of the Cuban system.
The electoral law stipulates that in each voting district there must be a minimum of two and a maximum of eight candidates. City council members serve two and a half year terms while provincial delegates and national parliament representatives are elected every five years.
As in the non-partisan city council elections held in the vast majority of US municipalities and cities - like Los Angeles, Boston, Cleveland, Houston, Seattle, Las Vegas, Chicago and Atlanta - Cuban candidates do not have to have a party affiliation to seek public office. Instead, they run on their personal merits, which may include professional, political, community, religious and labour involvements.
The Communist Party sees its role in the electoral process as a promoter of citizen participation and community awareness. The political organization, which is considered the ideological backbone of the revolution, considers grass roots support crucial to the survival of the system.
Similar to Republican and Democratic Party members running in municipal elections in the US, the non-partisan nature of the elections in Cuba does not exclude members of the Communist Party, but they must run as individuals.
High Voter Turnout
Since the current Cuban electoral system took effect in 1976, voter turnout has averaged 95% and above, one of the world's highest for non-obligatory voting. This contrasts to municipal elections in the United States, which often draw less than a third of the registered voters.
An excellent example is the city council elections recently held in Los Angeles, California. With several candidates vying for mayor, only 28 percent of the registered voters bothered to show up at the polls. The two leading candidates, incumbent James Hahn and challenger Antonio Villaraigosa -who will compete in a run-off election-, received the nod from only 8 and 6 percent of the registered voters. Despite the spending of millions of dollars on the campaign, the vast majority of the electorate didn't think any candidate was worth voting for.
Such a common situation in today's USA would send up smoke signals in Cuba. National Assembly President Ricardo Alarcon said in a recent interview, "…the primary emphasis [in the Cuban electoral system] is on the participation of the people. I would be very concerned if the level of involvement declined, if the public were to grow indifferent toward their government."
In the Bohemia magazine article about Cuba and the history of democracy quoted by a Canadian friends of Cuba group , Alarcon said, "…to resolve the basic problems of equality and build a system which allows participation to be channelled is easier said then done."
An article published March 14 in Granma newspaper, the official organ of the Cuban Communist Party, takes a look at the long road ahead for men and women to have a truly equal opportunity to hold public office. The author, Maria Julia Mayoral, notes that while women now represent 23.37 percent of the local representatives, up from 8 percent in 1976, there are still major roadblocks to overcome.
Females now represent nearly two thirds of the island's university graduates and also stand out in scientific research and community work. Nonetheless, Mayoral states, independent of their academic level and professional success, women continue to be tied to domestic obligations and family responsibilities that men conveniently believe are not theirs.
Foreign Media Blackout
Something that usually catches the eye of visitors at election time is how cities and towns in Cuba are not plastered with campaign propaganda and that local TV and radio programs are not bombarded with ads. Instead, candidate photos and biographies are publicly posted in the voting districts, where, do to their reduced size, the contenders are personally known by most voters. This year, meet the candidate evenings are also slated for the first two weeks of April.
Cuban elections may never be headline grabbers in the foreign media. The absence of fantastic promises and viscous negative media campaigns makes them rather dull by comparison. The large number of polling stations and always holding elections on a Sunday also mean virtually nobody ends up saying they didn't vote because they didn't have time, a common complaint lodged by a growing number of US citizens.
To the contrary, Iraq's elections in January inundated world headline news because it was essential for the United States to show the world that its brand of democracy had arrived to the war torn Persian Gulf nation. After all, the alleged reason for being there in the first place-weapons of mass destruction-had long since proven to be a fabrication. The millions that boycotted the elections in protest of the foreign occupation of their country did so, according to Washington, because of their terrorist and undemocratic sympathies. On the other hand, the White House conveniently writes off Cuba's elections and the high voter turnouts as "one-party" or "communist."
Local Government in Cuba
Municipal governments, called People's Power Assemblies, have a president and vice president similar to a mayor and vice-mayor. The number of electoral districts in the municipality determines the amount of city council members, known as delegates or representatives. The minimum number is 30 and some assemblies in the more densely populated areas have as many as 80, 100 or more members. A rural voting district may have as few as 300 constituents while that figure can reach 4,000 in densely populated urban areas. These are much smaller than most wards or districts in the United States.
Cuban city council members are empowered to elect the mayor and vice-mayor from within their ranks and must do so by secret ballot within 21 days after the elections.
The Cuban system puts great importance on citizen accessibility to their council people, thus explaining the smaller electoral districts and greater number of representatives than in local governments in the United States. In Cleveland, Ohio, for instance, the ratio is 24,000 residents to one city council representative and the rate is considerably higher in other urban populations.
Among the city council member's responsibilities is to receive complaints and suggestions about public services and social problems, and vote on a proposed municipal budget which then goes on to the Provincial and National Assemblies for review and final approval. Then, it's one of their jobs to see that the corresponding institutions implement budgeted projects.
In a country subjugated to nearly a half-century of economic, financial and commercial blockade from the world's greatest military and economic power, the limitations faced by Cuba make the work of the city council member far from easy. Many of the economic problems facing the country originate in the White House, or the country's colonial and dependent past, and some will continue as long as Washington insists.
However, creative efforts to resolve local problems with the limited resources at hand and making sure the municipality gets its fair share of support from the country's many social programs, are the key to being a successful representative. Election officials note that on an average 46.5 percent of the delegates are re-elected, some for multiple terms.
Open to All
For visitors to Cuba interested in seeing the island's electoral process in action, voter registration lists and candidate profiles are currently posted in convenient locations. In addition, the polling places on Election Day and the vote count are all open public activities.
A novel feature of Cuban elections is the presence of 5th to 9th grade students at the polling places. Besides getting acquainted with this important civic responsibility and symbolically guarding the ballot boxes, their function is to help voters with disabilities that request assistance.
On Election Day the polls will be open from 7 am until 6 pm, however anyone still in line at the scheduled time of closure is allowed to cast their ballot. The manual vote count is done in public immediately following the closing of the polls. To win, a candidate must obtain more than a 50% majority of the valid votes. In districts where no candidate obtains that amount, a run-off election will be held on April 24 between the top two contenders.
A slightly edited article originally written by Circles Robinson and published on the Radio Habana web page:
http://www.rhc.cu/ingles/elecciones/marzo/elecciones29mar1.htm
JKF got the votes of dead Chicagoans while Nixon got the votes of dead people in the Republican dominated downstate counties of Illinois. Millions of Blacks who would have voted for Kennedy in the states of the Old slavocracy of course were barred from the ballot box. This is the country that demanded Cuba be expelled from the OAS for not being democratic.
To the last minute, the US still maintained that Cuba had to move towards it's style of "democracy" before being reinvited to the OAS. This is ironic in that nowhere in the Constitution or the Declaration of Independance are the United States self described as being "democratic." It's also ironic that it's in the US that two consecutive elections were stolen by the machine around the imbecile George Bush, that the US set up a torture center on occupied Cuban territory where people who were not even charged with any crime are still being held (if our hopes and our President's words are in fact the truth, these detainees at least are not being tortured any longer.)
Cuba actually has free elections, and it is a democracy where money doesn't talk, swear or rule and over 90 percent of the people participate.
The following article is a bit dated, it regards Cuba's 2007 elections but it deserves being passed around today because of its clarification of Cuba's democratic reality:
Cuba's Secret Elections
One of the best-kept media secrets about Cuba is that the country holds regularly scheduled elections and that the Communist Party has nothing to do with the candidate selection.
Voter registration is automatic for all citizens reaching sixteen years of age, unlike many countries where getting on the voter lists can be a difficult process for some sectors of the population.
Another surprise to those unfamiliar with the Cuban electoral system is that money is not the driving force, a refreshing difference from the dance of dollars and unethical practices that characterize campaigns throughout a continent where winning public office can be highly profitable.
Cuba does not claim to have a perfect electoral system but defends it as being more voter-friendly than others. As in most countries, the electoral law is subject to constitutional amendments, like occurred in 1992, when it was decided that provincial delegates and national parliament members should be elected by voters just like local representatives.
Those standing for election on the island are neither nominated because of their personal wealth nor for being the best fund-raisers. Neither do they end up on corporate boards after leaving office as a payback for bending to special interest groups. The concept of a paid politician is absent in Cuba and even the national parliament representatives derive no financial compensation for their civic work.
Back in the 19th century, Cuban national hero Jose Marti was quoted as saying: "La Patria es ara, no pedestal" -- the homeland is an altar, not a pedestal. His statement symbolizes the model for public service on the island since the 1959 revolution.
Anyone Can Nominate, Anyone Can be Nominated
Candidates in each of the 15,097 electoral districts located in the 169 municipalities were chosen at open neighbourhood assemblies. All members of the electorate have the right to nominate a candidate or be picked to run for office, a unique feature of the Cuban system.
The electoral law stipulates that in each voting district there must be a minimum of two and a maximum of eight candidates. City council members serve two and a half year terms while provincial delegates and national parliament representatives are elected every five years.
As in the non-partisan city council elections held in the vast majority of US municipalities and cities - like Los Angeles, Boston, Cleveland, Houston, Seattle, Las Vegas, Chicago and Atlanta - Cuban candidates do not have to have a party affiliation to seek public office. Instead, they run on their personal merits, which may include professional, political, community, religious and labour involvements.
The Communist Party sees its role in the electoral process as a promoter of citizen participation and community awareness. The political organization, which is considered the ideological backbone of the revolution, considers grass roots support crucial to the survival of the system.
Similar to Republican and Democratic Party members running in municipal elections in the US, the non-partisan nature of the elections in Cuba does not exclude members of the Communist Party, but they must run as individuals.
High Voter Turnout
Since the current Cuban electoral system took effect in 1976, voter turnout has averaged 95% and above, one of the world's highest for non-obligatory voting. This contrasts to municipal elections in the United States, which often draw less than a third of the registered voters.
An excellent example is the city council elections recently held in Los Angeles, California. With several candidates vying for mayor, only 28 percent of the registered voters bothered to show up at the polls. The two leading candidates, incumbent James Hahn and challenger Antonio Villaraigosa -who will compete in a run-off election-, received the nod from only 8 and 6 percent of the registered voters. Despite the spending of millions of dollars on the campaign, the vast majority of the electorate didn't think any candidate was worth voting for.
Such a common situation in today's USA would send up smoke signals in Cuba. National Assembly President Ricardo Alarcon said in a recent interview, "…the primary emphasis [in the Cuban electoral system] is on the participation of the people. I would be very concerned if the level of involvement declined, if the public were to grow indifferent toward their government."
In the Bohemia magazine article about Cuba and the history of democracy quoted by a Canadian friends of Cuba group , Alarcon said, "…to resolve the basic problems of equality and build a system which allows participation to be channelled is easier said then done."
An article published March 14 in Granma newspaper, the official organ of the Cuban Communist Party, takes a look at the long road ahead for men and women to have a truly equal opportunity to hold public office. The author, Maria Julia Mayoral, notes that while women now represent 23.37 percent of the local representatives, up from 8 percent in 1976, there are still major roadblocks to overcome.
Females now represent nearly two thirds of the island's university graduates and also stand out in scientific research and community work. Nonetheless, Mayoral states, independent of their academic level and professional success, women continue to be tied to domestic obligations and family responsibilities that men conveniently believe are not theirs.
Foreign Media Blackout
Something that usually catches the eye of visitors at election time is how cities and towns in Cuba are not plastered with campaign propaganda and that local TV and radio programs are not bombarded with ads. Instead, candidate photos and biographies are publicly posted in the voting districts, where, do to their reduced size, the contenders are personally known by most voters. This year, meet the candidate evenings are also slated for the first two weeks of April.
Cuban elections may never be headline grabbers in the foreign media. The absence of fantastic promises and viscous negative media campaigns makes them rather dull by comparison. The large number of polling stations and always holding elections on a Sunday also mean virtually nobody ends up saying they didn't vote because they didn't have time, a common complaint lodged by a growing number of US citizens.
To the contrary, Iraq's elections in January inundated world headline news because it was essential for the United States to show the world that its brand of democracy had arrived to the war torn Persian Gulf nation. After all, the alleged reason for being there in the first place-weapons of mass destruction-had long since proven to be a fabrication. The millions that boycotted the elections in protest of the foreign occupation of their country did so, according to Washington, because of their terrorist and undemocratic sympathies. On the other hand, the White House conveniently writes off Cuba's elections and the high voter turnouts as "one-party" or "communist."
Local Government in Cuba
Municipal governments, called People's Power Assemblies, have a president and vice president similar to a mayor and vice-mayor. The number of electoral districts in the municipality determines the amount of city council members, known as delegates or representatives. The minimum number is 30 and some assemblies in the more densely populated areas have as many as 80, 100 or more members. A rural voting district may have as few as 300 constituents while that figure can reach 4,000 in densely populated urban areas. These are much smaller than most wards or districts in the United States.
Cuban city council members are empowered to elect the mayor and vice-mayor from within their ranks and must do so by secret ballot within 21 days after the elections.
The Cuban system puts great importance on citizen accessibility to their council people, thus explaining the smaller electoral districts and greater number of representatives than in local governments in the United States. In Cleveland, Ohio, for instance, the ratio is 24,000 residents to one city council representative and the rate is considerably higher in other urban populations.
Among the city council member's responsibilities is to receive complaints and suggestions about public services and social problems, and vote on a proposed municipal budget which then goes on to the Provincial and National Assemblies for review and final approval. Then, it's one of their jobs to see that the corresponding institutions implement budgeted projects.
In a country subjugated to nearly a half-century of economic, financial and commercial blockade from the world's greatest military and economic power, the limitations faced by Cuba make the work of the city council member far from easy. Many of the economic problems facing the country originate in the White House, or the country's colonial and dependent past, and some will continue as long as Washington insists.
However, creative efforts to resolve local problems with the limited resources at hand and making sure the municipality gets its fair share of support from the country's many social programs, are the key to being a successful representative. Election officials note that on an average 46.5 percent of the delegates are re-elected, some for multiple terms.
Open to All
For visitors to Cuba interested in seeing the island's electoral process in action, voter registration lists and candidate profiles are currently posted in convenient locations. In addition, the polling places on Election Day and the vote count are all open public activities.
A novel feature of Cuban elections is the presence of 5th to 9th grade students at the polling places. Besides getting acquainted with this important civic responsibility and symbolically guarding the ballot boxes, their function is to help voters with disabilities that request assistance.
On Election Day the polls will be open from 7 am until 6 pm, however anyone still in line at the scheduled time of closure is allowed to cast their ballot. The manual vote count is done in public immediately following the closing of the polls. To win, a candidate must obtain more than a 50% majority of the valid votes. In districts where no candidate obtains that amount, a run-off election will be held on April 24 between the top two contenders.
A slightly edited article originally written by Circles Robinson and published on the Radio Habana web page:
http://www.rhc.cu/ingles/elecciones/marzo/elecciones29mar1.htm
Tuesday, June 02, 2009
HAITI’S TOP TEN DEMANDS TO PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA
This Week in Haiti" is the English section of HAITI LIBERTE newsweekly. For
the complete edition with other news in French and Creole, please contact
the paper at (tel) 718-421-0162, (fax) 718-421-3471 or e-mail at
editor@haitiliberte.com. Also visit our website at
.
HAITI LIBERTE
"Justice. Verite. Independance."
* THIS WEEK IN HAITI *
January 21 - 27, 2009
Vol. 2, No. 27
by Haiti Liberté
With some two million people jamming Washington’s two mile long National Mall leading to the steps of the Capitol Building, Barack Hussein Obama was sworn in this Tuesday as the 44th President of the United States of America, the first African-American to hold the post.
The inauguration culminated a weekend of inaugural events during which the birth of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. was also fittingly commemorated. It was watched live on television by billions worldwide, from cities across North America, Europe, Africa and Asia, to small villages in the Haitian countryside.
Haitians could not but notice that Obama’s inauguration was marked by the same joy, hope and colossal crowds that were witnessed on February 7, 1991, when Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the victor of another "historic election," was sworn in as the President of Haiti for the first time.
The parallel also helps to remind us that the power of the Presidency, by itself, cannot change the state and the realities of a given country or the world. The forces of reaction and elite economic power still remain deeply entrenched despite the "Lavalas" outpouring for change the world witnessed on January 20, 2009. President Obama, just like President Aristide, will soon discover what kind of vicious system he now presides over if he truly wants or tries to reform it and put it at the service of people’s needs rather than the interests of the rich ruling class.
Of course, his policy pronouncements and cabinet choices so far show no sign of such a radical agenda.
What is now needed is a massive popular movement to demand that the promises, many of them vague, of Obama’s two-year presidential campaign become reality. It is further necessary that many unaddressed matters be brought to the fore as well.
While President Obama leads the United States and not Haiti, we think it appropriate for the Haitian people to articulate their demands to the new U.S. President. It should in no way be interpreted that President Obama has any right – legal, moral or political – to dictate anything to Haiti. But since the histories of the two nations are deeply intertwined, Haitians must make their will known.
Here, we formulate our top ten demands on behalf of Haitians everywhere.
1) President Obama, you should apologize for the 2004 coup d’état against Haiti which was principally fomented by the U.S. government. It caused thousands of deaths and hundreds of unwarranted and illegal political detentions and exiles, many of which continue to this day. It once again derailed Haitian democracy, the effects of which will be felt for generations.
You should also explicitly repudiate the Bush Administration policy of successfully banishing former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide not just from Haiti but from the Western Hemisphere. You should declare that the U.S. will facilitate Aristide’s return to Haiti and offer a jet to fly him back to his homeland from South Africa, just as it was an unmarked U.S. government jet that flew the kidnapped Haitian president and his wife at the gunpoint of U.S. Special Forces to Africa in the first place.
2) President Obama, you should call and work for the immediate withdrawal of U.N. occupation troops from Haiti. The U.N. is simply doing the bidding of the U.S., France and Canada, which were the governments behind the 2004 coup which brought with it the occupation. U.N. troops have carried out massacres, abused and humiliated our people, and wasted precious resources through pointless show patrols aimed at intimidating or creating a false sense of security. The U.N. military occupation is a violation of Haitian sovereignty and of international law.
3) President Obama, you should immediately abrogate the shameful 1997 treaties which allow U.S. warships and warplanes to penetrate Haitian waters and airspace whenever they please. This treaty, which was forced on Haiti and presents the U.S. as the "policeman" of the Caribbean and the world, should be condemned. Furthermore, all U.S. claims to the Haitian island of La Navasse should be abandoned.
4) President Obama, you should immediately grant all undocumented Haitian refugees in the U.S. Temporary Protected Status or TPS. After the four storms that savaged Haiti last August and September, Haiti is still reeling and buried in mud. All repatriations of Haitians must stop immediately.
5) President Obama, you must immediately halt the deportation of Haitian-born but U.S.-raised felons from the U.S. to Haiti. Often these criminals have no knowledge of Haiti, don’t speak the Krey l language, and contribute to Haiti’s crime problems.
6) President Obama, you should immediately reject and disapprove the neo-liberal policies which the U.S. government has forced on Haiti over the past two and a half decades. These include the push for Haiti to privatize its strategic state-owned enterprises, cut its government services, lower its tariff barriers, and balance its budget. Even you have said the U.S. may run a deficit in the trillions of dollars to meet the financial crisis your country faces. Haiti faces an even worse financial crisis, and this for many years.
7) President Obama, you must immediately stop U.S. aggression, threats, sabotage and bullying against our Caribbean neighbors, in particular Cuba and Venezuela. These two nations are our key allies, providing us with fuel, doctors, power plants, education, technical support and financial aid. U.S. aggression against them is unwarranted and illegal. It hurts and outrages the Haitian people.
8) President Obama, you should call for the immediate cancellation of Haiti’s $1.3 billion external debt, about 40% of which was rung up by the Duvalier dictatorships and never served the Haitian people. Most of this sum is owed to the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and Interamerican Development Bank. In all three institutions, the U.S. wields the most influence and votes. Haiti has already qualified for, but not received, debt relief through the Heavily Indebted Poor Country (HIPC) initiative. Haiti is being asked to meet difficult requirements while paying about $1 million a week to the banks while in the midst of a humanitarian emergency.
9) President Obama, you should publicly demand that President Nicolas Sarkozy of France honor Haiti’s 2003 demand for reparations totaling some $21.7 billion. From 1825 until 1947, France extorted some 90 million francs from its formal colony, with the connivance of other North American and European powers. Haiti’s demand for restitution of this sum with interest, which is founded in international law of which you are a student, would be a first step towards correcting the centuries of punishment Haiti has endured for being the first and last nation in history to carry out a successful slave revolution.
10) President Obama, you should offer Haiti, not aid, but reparations for the damage caused by the U.S. against Haiti in the coup d’états of 1991-1994 and 2004-2006, which claimed the lives of not fewer than 9,000 people. Reparations should also cover the damage and hardship caused by U.S. support of the Duvalier dictatorship for 29 years (1957-1986) and neo-Duvalierist dictators for another five years (1986-1990), which combined claimed another 10,000 lives. Support of these coups and dictatorships was, in fact, an undeclared war, which caused vast damage to Haiti’s people, development and democracy. For the nearly four decades in question, at about $250 million in damages yearly, we would set reparations for this undeclared war at $10 billion.
President Barack Obama, if your victory is to be anything more than symbolic, if your professions of faith in peace, justice, law and virtue are sincere, if you truly wish to reverse the course of the Bush Administration and its predecessors, then you will not hesitate to act on our demands. The Haitian people are watching. The whole world is watching.
All articles copyrighted Haiti Liberte. REPRINTS ENCOURAGED.
Please credit Haiti Liberte.
the complete edition with other news in French and Creole, please contact
the paper at (tel) 718-421-0162, (fax) 718-421-3471 or e-mail at
editor@haitiliberte.com. Also visit our website at
HAITI LIBERTE
"Justice. Verite. Independance."
* THIS WEEK IN HAITI *
January 21 - 27, 2009
Vol. 2, No. 27
by Haiti Liberté
With some two million people jamming Washington’s two mile long National Mall leading to the steps of the Capitol Building, Barack Hussein Obama was sworn in this Tuesday as the 44th President of the United States of America, the first African-American to hold the post.
The inauguration culminated a weekend of inaugural events during which the birth of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. was also fittingly commemorated. It was watched live on television by billions worldwide, from cities across North America, Europe, Africa and Asia, to small villages in the Haitian countryside.
Haitians could not but notice that Obama’s inauguration was marked by the same joy, hope and colossal crowds that were witnessed on February 7, 1991, when Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the victor of another "historic election," was sworn in as the President of Haiti for the first time.
The parallel also helps to remind us that the power of the Presidency, by itself, cannot change the state and the realities of a given country or the world. The forces of reaction and elite economic power still remain deeply entrenched despite the "Lavalas" outpouring for change the world witnessed on January 20, 2009. President Obama, just like President Aristide, will soon discover what kind of vicious system he now presides over if he truly wants or tries to reform it and put it at the service of people’s needs rather than the interests of the rich ruling class.
Of course, his policy pronouncements and cabinet choices so far show no sign of such a radical agenda.
What is now needed is a massive popular movement to demand that the promises, many of them vague, of Obama’s two-year presidential campaign become reality. It is further necessary that many unaddressed matters be brought to the fore as well.
While President Obama leads the United States and not Haiti, we think it appropriate for the Haitian people to articulate their demands to the new U.S. President. It should in no way be interpreted that President Obama has any right – legal, moral or political – to dictate anything to Haiti. But since the histories of the two nations are deeply intertwined, Haitians must make their will known.
Here, we formulate our top ten demands on behalf of Haitians everywhere.
1) President Obama, you should apologize for the 2004 coup d’état against Haiti which was principally fomented by the U.S. government. It caused thousands of deaths and hundreds of unwarranted and illegal political detentions and exiles, many of which continue to this day. It once again derailed Haitian democracy, the effects of which will be felt for generations.
You should also explicitly repudiate the Bush Administration policy of successfully banishing former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide not just from Haiti but from the Western Hemisphere. You should declare that the U.S. will facilitate Aristide’s return to Haiti and offer a jet to fly him back to his homeland from South Africa, just as it was an unmarked U.S. government jet that flew the kidnapped Haitian president and his wife at the gunpoint of U.S. Special Forces to Africa in the first place.
2) President Obama, you should call and work for the immediate withdrawal of U.N. occupation troops from Haiti. The U.N. is simply doing the bidding of the U.S., France and Canada, which were the governments behind the 2004 coup which brought with it the occupation. U.N. troops have carried out massacres, abused and humiliated our people, and wasted precious resources through pointless show patrols aimed at intimidating or creating a false sense of security. The U.N. military occupation is a violation of Haitian sovereignty and of international law.
3) President Obama, you should immediately abrogate the shameful 1997 treaties which allow U.S. warships and warplanes to penetrate Haitian waters and airspace whenever they please. This treaty, which was forced on Haiti and presents the U.S. as the "policeman" of the Caribbean and the world, should be condemned. Furthermore, all U.S. claims to the Haitian island of La Navasse should be abandoned.
4) President Obama, you should immediately grant all undocumented Haitian refugees in the U.S. Temporary Protected Status or TPS. After the four storms that savaged Haiti last August and September, Haiti is still reeling and buried in mud. All repatriations of Haitians must stop immediately.
5) President Obama, you must immediately halt the deportation of Haitian-born but U.S.-raised felons from the U.S. to Haiti. Often these criminals have no knowledge of Haiti, don’t speak the Krey l language, and contribute to Haiti’s crime problems.
6) President Obama, you should immediately reject and disapprove the neo-liberal policies which the U.S. government has forced on Haiti over the past two and a half decades. These include the push for Haiti to privatize its strategic state-owned enterprises, cut its government services, lower its tariff barriers, and balance its budget. Even you have said the U.S. may run a deficit in the trillions of dollars to meet the financial crisis your country faces. Haiti faces an even worse financial crisis, and this for many years.
7) President Obama, you must immediately stop U.S. aggression, threats, sabotage and bullying against our Caribbean neighbors, in particular Cuba and Venezuela. These two nations are our key allies, providing us with fuel, doctors, power plants, education, technical support and financial aid. U.S. aggression against them is unwarranted and illegal. It hurts and outrages the Haitian people.
8) President Obama, you should call for the immediate cancellation of Haiti’s $1.3 billion external debt, about 40% of which was rung up by the Duvalier dictatorships and never served the Haitian people. Most of this sum is owed to the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and Interamerican Development Bank. In all three institutions, the U.S. wields the most influence and votes. Haiti has already qualified for, but not received, debt relief through the Heavily Indebted Poor Country (HIPC) initiative. Haiti is being asked to meet difficult requirements while paying about $1 million a week to the banks while in the midst of a humanitarian emergency.
9) President Obama, you should publicly demand that President Nicolas Sarkozy of France honor Haiti’s 2003 demand for reparations totaling some $21.7 billion. From 1825 until 1947, France extorted some 90 million francs from its formal colony, with the connivance of other North American and European powers. Haiti’s demand for restitution of this sum with interest, which is founded in international law of which you are a student, would be a first step towards correcting the centuries of punishment Haiti has endured for being the first and last nation in history to carry out a successful slave revolution.
10) President Obama, you should offer Haiti, not aid, but reparations for the damage caused by the U.S. against Haiti in the coup d’états of 1991-1994 and 2004-2006, which claimed the lives of not fewer than 9,000 people. Reparations should also cover the damage and hardship caused by U.S. support of the Duvalier dictatorship for 29 years (1957-1986) and neo-Duvalierist dictators for another five years (1986-1990), which combined claimed another 10,000 lives. Support of these coups and dictatorships was, in fact, an undeclared war, which caused vast damage to Haiti’s people, development and democracy. For the nearly four decades in question, at about $250 million in damages yearly, we would set reparations for this undeclared war at $10 billion.
President Barack Obama, if your victory is to be anything more than symbolic, if your professions of faith in peace, justice, law and virtue are sincere, if you truly wish to reverse the course of the Bush Administration and its predecessors, then you will not hesitate to act on our demands. The Haitian people are watching. The whole world is watching.
All articles copyrighted Haiti Liberte. REPRINTS ENCOURAGED.
Please credit Haiti Liberte.
Monday, June 01, 2009
"Mistakes are the portals of discovery."- James Joyce
"Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken-winged bird, that cannot fly."- Langston Hughes
"The mode by which the inevitable comes to pass is effort."- Oliver Wendell Holmes
"The future depends on what we do in the present."- Mahatma Gandhi
"You may be disappointed if you fail but you are doomed if you don't try."- Beverly Sills
"Common sense is instinct. Enough of it is genius."- George Bernard Shaw
"At some point, you've got to stop evaluating and start doing."- Unknown
"Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration."- Thomas Edison
Justice For Troy Davis Means A Real Day In Court
3 leaders firmly in Davis’ corner 2 Ga. congressmen, NAACP leader say they are convinced of Davis’ innocence
He is on death row for murder. Two congressmen and the NAACP president visited.
By Errin Haines
Associated Press
Saturday, May 30, 2009
JACKSON, Ga. —- After meeting for nearly two hours with death row inmate Troy Davis on Friday, two Georgia congressmen and the president of the NAACP said they are convinced of his innocence and committed to saving his life.
Read the rest of this article
The Powerful (Not ALL POWERFUL )Have Meetings. Bilderberg and The Rockefeller University "Get Togethers"
I missed it but from May 14-17 many of the planet's heaviest hitters met in Greece in what's called the Bilderberg Conference, that's held every year and another even more private get together at Rockefeller University on York Avenue in Manhattan. You probably don't know anyone who ever graduated R.U., and that's because there are no classrooms there as such, just research, lots of research.
Before I start the quote I want to insert this short comment:
I doubt that these folks can decide things such as how long an economic crisis is going to run. I don't even know if they think they can decide such a thing, which seems to be akin to deciding on the schedule of ocean tides but surely they don't meet to whistle Dixie and exchange secret handshakes. They are in competition against each other but at the same time they have to have a realization that they are in the same boat together.
While billionaires meet to decide what to do with "extra people" who crowd up their world, many of the problems we have, especially in Europe and Japan derive from the fact that birthrate is falling. There are fewer and fewer young workers around to care for and fund the pensions of more and more retired people.
If I were a cold blooded reptilian minded power broker I'd be looking to save on both ends, that is to cut down on the number of births by various means and also to hurry the exit of the oldsters (at least the common herd of oldsters) for that great whatever it is that's beyond the sky or under the earth's crust. I think they call that "reforming" things like healthcare, medicare and social security.
Yes, when the powerful all agree something has to be reformed, you can bet four times out of five that they mean it has to be shrunk down or made to go away.
The idea that there are too many people in the world is old. Thomas Malthus spit it out back in 1789 when there were around eight or nine hundred million people while now there are around seven billion of us.
It was a crackpot idea in 1789 and it remains one today. What there are too many of, in my opinion, are greedy rich people, or what could be called two legged pigs, and their way of life. Their outlook on life leaves little room for others.
Here's a report I got in my email from Global Research, dated May 26, 2009
Now here's the article, by Andrew G. Marshall
Among the members of the Bilderberg Group are various European monarchs. At this years meeting, Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands was present, who happens to be the largest single shareholder in Royal Dutch Shell, one of the world's largest corporations. She was joined by one of her three sons, Prince Constantijn, who also attended the meeting. Prince Constantijn has worked with the Dutch European Commissioner for the EU, as well as having been a strategic policy consultant with Booz Allen & Hamilton in London, a major strategy and technology consulting firm with expertise in Economic and Business Analysis, Intelligence and Operations Analysis and Information Technology, among many others. Prince Constantijn has also been a policy researcher for RAND Corporation in Europe. RAND was initially founded as a global policy think tank that was formed to offer research and analysis to the US Armed Forces, however, it now works with governments, foundations, international organizations and commercial organizations.[26] Also present among European Royalty was Prince Philippe of Belgium, and Queen Sofia of Spain.
Private Bankers
As usual, the list of attendees was also replete with names representing the largest banks in the world. Among them, David Rockefeller, former CEO and Chairman of Chase Manhattan, now JP Morgan Chase, of which he was, until recently, Chairman of the International Advisory Board; and still sits as Honourary Chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations, Chairman of the Board of the Americas Society and Council of the Americas, Honourary Chairman of the Trilateral Commission, which he founded alongside Zbigniew Brzezinski; also a founding member of the Bilderberg Group, prominent philanthropist and is the current patriarch of one of the world's richest and most powerful banking dynasties.
Also present was Josef Ackermann, a Swiss banker who is CEO of Deutsche Bank, also a non-executive director of Royal Dutch Shell; Deputy Chairman of Siemens AG, Europe's largest engineering corporation; he is also a member of the International Advisory Council of Zurich Financial Services Group; Chairman of the Board of the Institute International of Finance, the world's only global association of financial institutions; and Vice Chairman of the Foundation Board of the World Economic Forum.[27]
Roger Altman was also present at the Bilderberg meeting, an investment banker, private equity investor and former Deputy Treasury Secretary in the Clinton Administration. Other bankers at this years meeting include Ana Patricia Botin, Chairman of the Spanish bank, Banco Español de Crédito, formerly having worked with JP Morgan; Frederic Oudea, CEO and newly appointed Chairman of the Board of French bank Societe Generale; Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa, an Italian banker and economist, formerly Italy's Minister of Economy and Finance; Jacob Wallenberg, Chairman of Investor AB; Marcus Wallenberg, CEO of Investor AB; and George David, CEO of United Technologies Corporation, who also sits on the board of Citigroup, member of the Business Council, the Business Roundtable, and is Vice Chairman of the Peterson Institute for International Economics. [For more on the Peterson Institute, see: Appendix 1]
Canadian bankers include W. Edmund Clark, President and CEO of TD Bank Financial Group, also a member of the board of directors of the C.D. Howe Institute, a prominent Canadian think tank; Frank McKenna, Deputy Chairman of TD Bank Financial Group, former Canadian Ambassador to the United States, former Premier of New Brunswick; and Indira Samarasekera, President of the University of Alberta, who is also on the board of Scotiabank, one of Canada's largest banks.
Central Bankers
Of course, among the notable members of the Bilderberg Group, are the world's major central bankers. Among this years members are the Governor of the National Bank of Greece, Governor of the Bank of Italy, President of the European Investment Bank, James Wolfensohn, former President of the World Bank, and Nout Wellink, on the board of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS).[28] Jean-Claude Trichet, the President of the European Central Bank was also present.[29] There is no indication that the Governor of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke was present, which would be an odd turn of events, considering that the Federal Reserve Governor is always present at Bilderberg meetings, alongside the President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, William C. Dudley. I have contacted the New York Fed inquiring if Dudley visited Greece or went to any meetings in Greece between May 14-17, or if another senior representative from the New York Fed went in his stead. I have yet to get a response.
The Obama Administration at Bilderberg
National Security Adviser General James Jones
The Obama administration was heavily represented at this years Bilderberg meeting. Among the attendees were Keith B. Alexander, a Lieutenant General of U.S. Army and Director of the National Security Agency, the massive spying agency of the United States; Timothy Geithner, US Treasury Secretary and former President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York; Richard Holbrooke, the Obama administration's special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan; General James Jones, United States National Security Advisor; Henry Kissinger, Obama's special envoy to Russia, longtime Bilderberg member and former Secretary of State and National Security Advisor; Dennis Ross, special advisor for the Persian Gulf and Southwest Asia to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton; David Patraeus, Commander of CENTCOM, (U.S. Central Command, in the Middle East), Lawrence Summers, Director of the White House's National Economic Council, former Treasury Secretary in the Clinton administration, former President of Harvard University, former Chief Economist of the World Bank; Paul Volcker, former Governor of the Federal Reserve System and Chair of Obama's Economic Recovery Advisory Board; Robert Zoellick, former Chairman of Goldman Sachs and current President of the World Bank;[30] and Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg.[31]
Other Notable Names
Among many others present at the meeting are Viscount Étienne Davignon, former Vice President of the European Commission, and Honourary Chairman of the Bilderberg Group; Francisco Pinto Balsemão, former Prime Minister of Portugal; Franco Bernabè, CEO of Telecom Italia and Vice Chairman of Rothschild Europe; Carl Bildt, former Prime Minister of Sweden; Kenneth Clarke, Shadow Business Secretary in the UK; Richard Dearlove, former head of Britain's Secret Intelligence Services (MI6); Donald Graham, CEO of the Washington Post Company; Jaap De Hoop Scheffer, Secretary-General of NATO; John Kerr, member of the British House of Lords and Deputy Chairman of Royal Dutch Shell; Jessica Matthews, President of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; Richard Perle of the American Enterprise Institute; Romano Prodi, former Italian Prime Minister; J. Robert S. Prichard, CEO of Torstar Corporation and President Emeritus of the University of Toronto; Peter Sutherland, former Director General of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), first Director General of the World Trade Organization (WTO), and is currently Chairman of British Petroleum (BP) and Goldman Sachs International as well as being a board member of the Royal Bank of Scotland, Chairman of the Trilateral Commission, Vice Chairman of the European Roundtable of Industrialists, and longtime Bilderberg member; Peter Thiel, on the board of directors of Facebook; Jeroen van der Veer, CEO of Royal Dutch Shell; Martin Wolf, Associate Editor and Chief Economics Commentator of the Financial Times newspaper; and Fareed Zakaria, US journalist and board member of the Council on Foreign Relations.[32] There were also some reports that this years meeting would include Google CEO Eric Schmidt, as well as Wall Street Journal Editor Paul Gigot,[33] both of whom attended last years meeting.[34]
Before I start the quote I want to insert this short comment:
I doubt that these folks can decide things such as how long an economic crisis is going to run. I don't even know if they think they can decide such a thing, which seems to be akin to deciding on the schedule of ocean tides but surely they don't meet to whistle Dixie and exchange secret handshakes. They are in competition against each other but at the same time they have to have a realization that they are in the same boat together.
While billionaires meet to decide what to do with "extra people" who crowd up their world, many of the problems we have, especially in Europe and Japan derive from the fact that birthrate is falling. There are fewer and fewer young workers around to care for and fund the pensions of more and more retired people.
If I were a cold blooded reptilian minded power broker I'd be looking to save on both ends, that is to cut down on the number of births by various means and also to hurry the exit of the oldsters (at least the common herd of oldsters) for that great whatever it is that's beyond the sky or under the earth's crust. I think they call that "reforming" things like healthcare, medicare and social security.
Yes, when the powerful all agree something has to be reformed, you can bet four times out of five that they mean it has to be shrunk down or made to go away.
The idea that there are too many people in the world is old. Thomas Malthus spit it out back in 1789 when there were around eight or nine hundred million people while now there are around seven billion of us.
It was a crackpot idea in 1789 and it remains one today. What there are too many of, in my opinion, are greedy rich people, or what could be called two legged pigs, and their way of life. Their outlook on life leaves little room for others.
Here's a report I got in my email from Global Research, dated May 26, 2009
Now here's the article, by Andrew G. Marshall
Among the members of the Bilderberg Group are various European monarchs. At this years meeting, Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands was present, who happens to be the largest single shareholder in Royal Dutch Shell, one of the world's largest corporations. She was joined by one of her three sons, Prince Constantijn, who also attended the meeting. Prince Constantijn has worked with the Dutch European Commissioner for the EU, as well as having been a strategic policy consultant with Booz Allen & Hamilton in London, a major strategy and technology consulting firm with expertise in Economic and Business Analysis, Intelligence and Operations Analysis and Information Technology, among many others. Prince Constantijn has also been a policy researcher for RAND Corporation in Europe. RAND was initially founded as a global policy think tank that was formed to offer research and analysis to the US Armed Forces, however, it now works with governments, foundations, international organizations and commercial organizations.[26] Also present among European Royalty was Prince Philippe of Belgium, and Queen Sofia of Spain.
Private Bankers
As usual, the list of attendees was also replete with names representing the largest banks in the world. Among them, David Rockefeller, former CEO and Chairman of Chase Manhattan, now JP Morgan Chase, of which he was, until recently, Chairman of the International Advisory Board; and still sits as Honourary Chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations, Chairman of the Board of the Americas Society and Council of the Americas, Honourary Chairman of the Trilateral Commission, which he founded alongside Zbigniew Brzezinski; also a founding member of the Bilderberg Group, prominent philanthropist and is the current patriarch of one of the world's richest and most powerful banking dynasties.
Also present was Josef Ackermann, a Swiss banker who is CEO of Deutsche Bank, also a non-executive director of Royal Dutch Shell; Deputy Chairman of Siemens AG, Europe's largest engineering corporation; he is also a member of the International Advisory Council of Zurich Financial Services Group; Chairman of the Board of the Institute International of Finance, the world's only global association of financial institutions; and Vice Chairman of the Foundation Board of the World Economic Forum.[27]
Roger Altman was also present at the Bilderberg meeting, an investment banker, private equity investor and former Deputy Treasury Secretary in the Clinton Administration. Other bankers at this years meeting include Ana Patricia Botin, Chairman of the Spanish bank, Banco Español de Crédito, formerly having worked with JP Morgan; Frederic Oudea, CEO and newly appointed Chairman of the Board of French bank Societe Generale; Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa, an Italian banker and economist, formerly Italy's Minister of Economy and Finance; Jacob Wallenberg, Chairman of Investor AB; Marcus Wallenberg, CEO of Investor AB; and George David, CEO of United Technologies Corporation, who also sits on the board of Citigroup, member of the Business Council, the Business Roundtable, and is Vice Chairman of the Peterson Institute for International Economics. [For more on the Peterson Institute, see: Appendix 1]
Canadian bankers include W. Edmund Clark, President and CEO of TD Bank Financial Group, also a member of the board of directors of the C.D. Howe Institute, a prominent Canadian think tank; Frank McKenna, Deputy Chairman of TD Bank Financial Group, former Canadian Ambassador to the United States, former Premier of New Brunswick; and Indira Samarasekera, President of the University of Alberta, who is also on the board of Scotiabank, one of Canada's largest banks.
Central Bankers
Of course, among the notable members of the Bilderberg Group, are the world's major central bankers. Among this years members are the Governor of the National Bank of Greece, Governor of the Bank of Italy, President of the European Investment Bank, James Wolfensohn, former President of the World Bank, and Nout Wellink, on the board of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS).[28] Jean-Claude Trichet, the President of the European Central Bank was also present.[29] There is no indication that the Governor of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke was present, which would be an odd turn of events, considering that the Federal Reserve Governor is always present at Bilderberg meetings, alongside the President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, William C. Dudley. I have contacted the New York Fed inquiring if Dudley visited Greece or went to any meetings in Greece between May 14-17, or if another senior representative from the New York Fed went in his stead. I have yet to get a response.
The Obama Administration at Bilderberg
National Security Adviser General James Jones
The Obama administration was heavily represented at this years Bilderberg meeting. Among the attendees were Keith B. Alexander, a Lieutenant General of U.S. Army and Director of the National Security Agency, the massive spying agency of the United States; Timothy Geithner, US Treasury Secretary and former President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York; Richard Holbrooke, the Obama administration's special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan; General James Jones, United States National Security Advisor; Henry Kissinger, Obama's special envoy to Russia, longtime Bilderberg member and former Secretary of State and National Security Advisor; Dennis Ross, special advisor for the Persian Gulf and Southwest Asia to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton; David Patraeus, Commander of CENTCOM, (U.S. Central Command, in the Middle East), Lawrence Summers, Director of the White House's National Economic Council, former Treasury Secretary in the Clinton administration, former President of Harvard University, former Chief Economist of the World Bank; Paul Volcker, former Governor of the Federal Reserve System and Chair of Obama's Economic Recovery Advisory Board; Robert Zoellick, former Chairman of Goldman Sachs and current President of the World Bank;[30] and Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg.[31]
Other Notable Names
Among many others present at the meeting are Viscount Étienne Davignon, former Vice President of the European Commission, and Honourary Chairman of the Bilderberg Group; Francisco Pinto Balsemão, former Prime Minister of Portugal; Franco Bernabè, CEO of Telecom Italia and Vice Chairman of Rothschild Europe; Carl Bildt, former Prime Minister of Sweden; Kenneth Clarke, Shadow Business Secretary in the UK; Richard Dearlove, former head of Britain's Secret Intelligence Services (MI6); Donald Graham, CEO of the Washington Post Company; Jaap De Hoop Scheffer, Secretary-General of NATO; John Kerr, member of the British House of Lords and Deputy Chairman of Royal Dutch Shell; Jessica Matthews, President of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; Richard Perle of the American Enterprise Institute; Romano Prodi, former Italian Prime Minister; J. Robert S. Prichard, CEO of Torstar Corporation and President Emeritus of the University of Toronto; Peter Sutherland, former Director General of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), first Director General of the World Trade Organization (WTO), and is currently Chairman of British Petroleum (BP) and Goldman Sachs International as well as being a board member of the Royal Bank of Scotland, Chairman of the Trilateral Commission, Vice Chairman of the European Roundtable of Industrialists, and longtime Bilderberg member; Peter Thiel, on the board of directors of Facebook; Jeroen van der Veer, CEO of Royal Dutch Shell; Martin Wolf, Associate Editor and Chief Economics Commentator of the Financial Times newspaper; and Fareed Zakaria, US journalist and board member of the Council on Foreign Relations.[32] There were also some reports that this years meeting would include Google CEO Eric Schmidt, as well as Wall Street Journal Editor Paul Gigot,[33] both of whom attended last years meeting.[34]
A Dramatization Of The Famous 911 Call By a Cop Who "Overdosed" On Marijuana He Had Stolen
This is a laugh.
Monday, May 25, 2009
Legalize Drugs, Save Mexico
legalize drugs mexico cartel legal al capone prohibition murfreesboro pot kush marijuana smoke violence hillary clinton aid cheez-it sam's club tax booze drunk buzz munchies dope grow harvest high stoned beer grass weed bale mexican wars beheadings border copperhead road night chicago died moonshine shine alcohol liquor companies purple police corruption
Yet Another Bogus 'Terror' Plot
May 24th, 2009 3:53pm
By Robert Dreyfuss / Nation
By the now, it's maddeningly familiar. A scary terrorist plot is announced. Then it's revealed that the suspects are a hapless bunch of ne'er-do-wells or run-of-the-mill thugs without the slightest connection to any terrorists at all, never mind to Al Qaeda. Finally, the last piece of the puzzle: the entire plot is revealed to have been cooked up by a scummy government agent-provocateur.
I've seen this movie before.
In this case, the alleged perps -- Onta Williams, James Cromitie, David Williams, and Laguerre Payen -- were losers, ex-cons, drug addicts. Al Qaeda they're not. Without the assistance of the agent who entrapped them, they would never have dreamed of committing political violence, nor would they have had the slightest idea about where to acquire plastic explosives or a Stinger missile. That didn't stop prosecutors from acting as if they'd captured Osama bin Laden himself. Noted the Los Angeles Times:
Prosecutors called it the latest in a string of homegrown terrorism plots hatched after Sept. 11.
"It's hard to envision a more chilling plot," Assistant U.S. Atty. Eric Snyder said in court Thursday. He described all four suspects as "eager to bring death to Jews."
Actually, it's hard to imagine a stupider, less competent, and less important plot. The four losers were ensnared by a creepy FBI agent who hung around the mosque in upstate New York until he found what he was looking for. Here's the New York Times account:
Salahuddin Mustafa Muhammad, the imam at the mosque where the authorities say the confidential informant first encountered the men, said none of the men were active in the mosque. ...
Mr. Cromitie was there last June, and he met a stranger.
He had no way of knowing that the stranger's path to the mosque began in 2002, when he was arrested on federal charges of identity theft. He was sentenced to five years' probation, and became a confidential informant for the F.B.I. He began showing up at the mosque in Newburgh around 2007, Mr. Muhammad said.
The stranger's behavior aroused the imam's suspicions. He invited other worshipers to meals, and spoke of violence and jihad, so the imam said he steered clear of him.
"There was just something fishy about him," Mr. Muhammad said. Members "believed he was a government agent."
Mr. Muhammad said members of his congregation told him the man he believed was the informant offered at least one of them a substantial amount of money to join his "team."
So a creepy thug buttonholes people at a mosque, foaming at the mouth about violence and jihad? This is law enforcement? Just imagine if someone did this at a local church, or some synagogue. And the imam says the people "believed he was a government agent."
Preying on these losers, none of whom were apparently actual Muslims, the "confidential informant" orchestrated the acquisition of a disabled Stinger missile to shoot down military planes and cooked up a wild scheme about attacking a Jewish center in the Bronx.
It gets even more pathetic:
The only one of the four suspects who appears to have aroused any suspicion was Payen, a Haitian native who attended the Newburgh mosque. Assistant imam Hamid Rashada said his dishevelment and odd behavior disturbed some members, said the assistant imam, Hamid Rashada.
When Payen appeared in court, defense attorney Marilyn Reader described him as "intellectually challenged" and on medication for schizophrenia. The Associated Press said that when he was asked if he understood the proceedings, Payen replied: "Sort of."
Despite the pompous statements from Mayor Bloomberg of New York and other politicians, including Representative Peter King, the whole story is bogus. The four losers may have been inclined to violence, and they may have harbored a virulent strain of anti-Semitism. But it seems that the informant whipped up their violent tendencies and their hatred of Jews, cooked up the plot, incited them, arranged their purchase of weapons, and then had them busted. To ensure that it made headlines, the creepy informant claimed to be representing a Pakistani extremist group, Jaish-e Muhammad, a bona fide terrorist organization. He wasn't, of course.
It is disgusting and outrageous that the FBI is sending provocateurs into mosques.
The headlines reinforce the very fear that Dick Cheney is trying to stir up. The story strengthens the narrative that the "homeland" is under attack. It's not. As I've written repeatedly, since 9/11 not a single American has even been punched in the nose by an angry Muslim, as far as I can tell. Plot after plot -- the destruction of the Brooklyn Bridge! bombing the New York Subways! taking down the Sears Tower! bombing the Prudential building in Newark! -- proved to be utter nonsense.
By Robert Dreyfuss / Nation
By the now, it's maddeningly familiar. A scary terrorist plot is announced. Then it's revealed that the suspects are a hapless bunch of ne'er-do-wells or run-of-the-mill thugs without the slightest connection to any terrorists at all, never mind to Al Qaeda. Finally, the last piece of the puzzle: the entire plot is revealed to have been cooked up by a scummy government agent-provocateur.
I've seen this movie before.
In this case, the alleged perps -- Onta Williams, James Cromitie, David Williams, and Laguerre Payen -- were losers, ex-cons, drug addicts. Al Qaeda they're not. Without the assistance of the agent who entrapped them, they would never have dreamed of committing political violence, nor would they have had the slightest idea about where to acquire plastic explosives or a Stinger missile. That didn't stop prosecutors from acting as if they'd captured Osama bin Laden himself. Noted the Los Angeles Times:
Prosecutors called it the latest in a string of homegrown terrorism plots hatched after Sept. 11.
"It's hard to envision a more chilling plot," Assistant U.S. Atty. Eric Snyder said in court Thursday. He described all four suspects as "eager to bring death to Jews."
Actually, it's hard to imagine a stupider, less competent, and less important plot. The four losers were ensnared by a creepy FBI agent who hung around the mosque in upstate New York until he found what he was looking for. Here's the New York Times account:
Salahuddin Mustafa Muhammad, the imam at the mosque where the authorities say the confidential informant first encountered the men, said none of the men were active in the mosque. ...
Mr. Cromitie was there last June, and he met a stranger.
He had no way of knowing that the stranger's path to the mosque began in 2002, when he was arrested on federal charges of identity theft. He was sentenced to five years' probation, and became a confidential informant for the F.B.I. He began showing up at the mosque in Newburgh around 2007, Mr. Muhammad said.
The stranger's behavior aroused the imam's suspicions. He invited other worshipers to meals, and spoke of violence and jihad, so the imam said he steered clear of him.
"There was just something fishy about him," Mr. Muhammad said. Members "believed he was a government agent."
Mr. Muhammad said members of his congregation told him the man he believed was the informant offered at least one of them a substantial amount of money to join his "team."
So a creepy thug buttonholes people at a mosque, foaming at the mouth about violence and jihad? This is law enforcement? Just imagine if someone did this at a local church, or some synagogue. And the imam says the people "believed he was a government agent."
Preying on these losers, none of whom were apparently actual Muslims, the "confidential informant" orchestrated the acquisition of a disabled Stinger missile to shoot down military planes and cooked up a wild scheme about attacking a Jewish center in the Bronx.
It gets even more pathetic:
The only one of the four suspects who appears to have aroused any suspicion was Payen, a Haitian native who attended the Newburgh mosque. Assistant imam Hamid Rashada said his dishevelment and odd behavior disturbed some members, said the assistant imam, Hamid Rashada.
When Payen appeared in court, defense attorney Marilyn Reader described him as "intellectually challenged" and on medication for schizophrenia. The Associated Press said that when he was asked if he understood the proceedings, Payen replied: "Sort of."
Despite the pompous statements from Mayor Bloomberg of New York and other politicians, including Representative Peter King, the whole story is bogus. The four losers may have been inclined to violence, and they may have harbored a virulent strain of anti-Semitism. But it seems that the informant whipped up their violent tendencies and their hatred of Jews, cooked up the plot, incited them, arranged their purchase of weapons, and then had them busted. To ensure that it made headlines, the creepy informant claimed to be representing a Pakistani extremist group, Jaish-e Muhammad, a bona fide terrorist organization. He wasn't, of course.
It is disgusting and outrageous that the FBI is sending provocateurs into mosques.
The headlines reinforce the very fear that Dick Cheney is trying to stir up. The story strengthens the narrative that the "homeland" is under attack. It's not. As I've written repeatedly, since 9/11 not a single American has even been punched in the nose by an angry Muslim, as far as I can tell. Plot after plot -- the destruction of the Brooklyn Bridge! bombing the New York Subways! taking down the Sears Tower! bombing the Prudential building in Newark! -- proved to be utter nonsense.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Afghanistan/ Pakistan. Give Me a Break, Please.
If we want to believe that a handful of Arabs residing in the US went to flight training, got box cutters and did these really horrendous attacks, what would that have to do with Afghanistan or Pakistan today?
When the Taliban was the defacto government in Afghanistan it virtually eradicated the opium poppy in the areas it ruled. Taliban leaders in fact made friendly visits to the US including to George Bush's ranch in Texas. After 9/11, in October 2001 (and we're assuming the tale of the Arabs with box cutters explains the attack) the Taliban made an offer to George W. Bush: Stop bombing our people and prove with some evidence that Osama Bin Ladn caused the attacks and we'll send him to a third country where he can be put on trial. Now, considering that the US had commenced bombing and attacking its erstwhile ally, this was a reasonable opening for negotiations. Most plain is that the US refused. Could it be because there was no real evidence connecting it's former agent Osama to the bombings?
Now the Afghanistan war has spread into Pakistan. Possibly a million Pakistanis have been all of a sudden turned into internal refugees. Pakistan has nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them at least medium range. What a mess!!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/oct/14/afghanistan.terrorism5
Bush rejects Taliban offer to hand Bin Laden over
9.30pm update: * Taliban demand evidence of Bin Laden's guilt * Second week of airstrikes starts * Taliban urges US to halt bombing
Buzz up!
Digg it
Staff and agencies
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 14 October 2001 22.19 BST
Article history
President George Bush rejected as "non-negotiable" an offer by the Taliban to discuss turning over Osama bin Laden if the United States ended the bombing in Afghanistan.
Returning to the White House after a weekend at Camp David, the president said the bombing would not stop, unless the ruling Taliban "turn [bin Laden] over, turn his cohorts over, turn any hostages they hold over." He added, "There's no need to discuss innocence or guilt. We know he's guilty". In Jalalabad, deputy prime minister Haji Abdul Kabir - the third most powerful figure in the ruling Taliban regime - told reporters that the Taliban would require evidence that Bin Laden was behind the September 11 terrorist attacks in the US, but added: "we would be ready to hand him over to a third country".
The offer came a day after the Taliban's supreme leader rebuffed Bush's "second chance" for the Islamic militia to surrender Bin Laden to the US.
Mullah Mohammed Omar said there was no move to "hand anyone over".
Taliban 'ready to discuss' Bin Laden handover if bombing halts. The Taliban would be ready to discuss handing over Osama bin Laden to a neutral country if the US halted the bombing of Afghanistan, a senior Taliban official said today.
Afghanistan's deputy prime minister, Haji Abdul Kabir, told reporters that the Taliban would require evidence that Bin Laden was behind the September 11 terrorist attacks in the US.
"If the Taliban is given evidence that Osama bin Laden is involved" and the bombing campaign stopped, "we would be ready to hand him over to a third country", Mr Kabir added.
But it would have to be a state that would never "come under pressure from the United States", he said.
Mr Kabir urged America to halt its air campaign, now in its eighth day, and open negotiations. "If America were to step back from the current policy, then we could negotiate," he said. "Then we could discuss which third country."
Large explosions caused by American bombs and missiles have been reported to the south and east of the Afghan capital, Kabul, this evening.
The sky above the city has been filled with tracer fire from Taliban anti-aircraft guns once again.
Before the start of the air campaign, the Taliban had demanded evidence of Bin Laden's involvement in the attack and had offered to try him before an Islamic court inside Afghanistan - proposals that the US promptly rejected.
Al-Qaida warning an 'admission of guilt'
Threats of new terrorist strikes against Britain and the US from Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida group amount to an admission of guilt for the September 11 attacks, the deputy prime minister, John Prescott, said today.
Mr Prescott, speaking while on a diplomatic mission in Moscow, argued that the latest statement from al-Qaida strongly suggested Bin Laden's culpability for last month's attacks on New York and Washington.
"What I have heard about the message given ... is basically confirming, I think, the guilt of Bin Laden, who has made it clear that he wants to continue these actions," he told BBC1's Breakfast with Frost programme this morning.
The new threats from al-Qaida came from spokesman Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, in a video-taped statement broadcast on Qatar's Al-Jazeera Arabic TV news network.
He said Muslims in the US and Britain "should avoid travelling by air or living in high buildings or towers".
Americans and Britons were also warned to leave the Arabian Peninsula "because the land will burn with fire under their feet".
Washington dismissed the comments as "propaganda", while a Downing Street spokeswoman echoed Mr Prescott's comment that the threats amounted to an admission of guilt. (Full story)
Anti-US protests engulf Pakistani townThousands of anti-US protesters today converged on a southern Pakistani town, fighting pitched battles with police and paramilitary troops.
One person was killed and 24 were injured in the battles around Jacobabad, police said.
The desert city is the home of one of two air bases made available to US forces to support the air campaign against Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida network.
As rage grew over US-led air strikes on Afghanistan, one militant leader exhorted followers to set Shabaz airbase in Jacobabad on fire "at any cost", and another called on Pakistan's generals to overthrow the country's military ruler, General Pervez Musharraf.(Full story)
Cathedral cleared in 'powder' scare.
Firefighters wearing protective suits were this afternoon attempting to clear up white powder dropped in Canterbury Cathedral by a man reported to be of Arab appearance.
The cathedral was evacuated at around 2.30pm today after the man was seen dropping the powder in one of its chapels.
The fire brigade was called in to clear up the powder and take samples for analysis, amid heightened concerns about biological warfare attacks in Britain.
It is understood the powder is not thought to be a biological agent, such as anthrax, but the cathedral remains closed tonight as tests are carried out. (Full story)
UN commissioner warns of Afghan starvation threat
United Nations human rights commissioner Mary Robinson has called for a pause in the US-led bombing of Afghanistan to allow food aid into the country and prevent a "Rwanda-style" humanitarian disaster.
The former Irish president said that otherwise America and its allies could preside over the deaths from starvation of millions of people in Afghanistan.
Mrs Robinson, speaking to BBC1's Breakfast with Frost programme from Geneva, said helping Afghanistan's civilian population through the winter had to be a top priority. (Full story)
Okay, President Obama has inherited a mess,many messes in fact, including the mentality of the American public. Let's not forget that the Republicans got a majority of white voters' support! I always have thought Obama is a basically progressive person who prefers getting into real politics to standing on street corners waving placards. Politics is of course about deception, doing what is really possible, and compromises. I don't envy President Obama if he really wants to establish rule of law in the United states, if he really wants to work with other nations to make the world a better place. It's up to others to tell the truth and create some space for sanity.
When the Taliban was the defacto government in Afghanistan it virtually eradicated the opium poppy in the areas it ruled. Taliban leaders in fact made friendly visits to the US including to George Bush's ranch in Texas. After 9/11, in October 2001 (and we're assuming the tale of the Arabs with box cutters explains the attack) the Taliban made an offer to George W. Bush: Stop bombing our people and prove with some evidence that Osama Bin Ladn caused the attacks and we'll send him to a third country where he can be put on trial. Now, considering that the US had commenced bombing and attacking its erstwhile ally, this was a reasonable opening for negotiations. Most plain is that the US refused. Could it be because there was no real evidence connecting it's former agent Osama to the bombings?
Now the Afghanistan war has spread into Pakistan. Possibly a million Pakistanis have been all of a sudden turned into internal refugees. Pakistan has nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them at least medium range. What a mess!!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/oct/14/afghanistan.terrorism5
Bush rejects Taliban offer to hand Bin Laden over
9.30pm update: * Taliban demand evidence of Bin Laden's guilt * Second week of airstrikes starts * Taliban urges US to halt bombing
Buzz up!
Digg it
Staff and agencies
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 14 October 2001 22.19 BST
Article history
President George Bush rejected as "non-negotiable" an offer by the Taliban to discuss turning over Osama bin Laden if the United States ended the bombing in Afghanistan.
Returning to the White House after a weekend at Camp David, the president said the bombing would not stop, unless the ruling Taliban "turn [bin Laden] over, turn his cohorts over, turn any hostages they hold over." He added, "There's no need to discuss innocence or guilt. We know he's guilty". In Jalalabad, deputy prime minister Haji Abdul Kabir - the third most powerful figure in the ruling Taliban regime - told reporters that the Taliban would require evidence that Bin Laden was behind the September 11 terrorist attacks in the US, but added: "we would be ready to hand him over to a third country".
The offer came a day after the Taliban's supreme leader rebuffed Bush's "second chance" for the Islamic militia to surrender Bin Laden to the US.
Mullah Mohammed Omar said there was no move to "hand anyone over".
Taliban 'ready to discuss' Bin Laden handover if bombing halts. The Taliban would be ready to discuss handing over Osama bin Laden to a neutral country if the US halted the bombing of Afghanistan, a senior Taliban official said today.
Afghanistan's deputy prime minister, Haji Abdul Kabir, told reporters that the Taliban would require evidence that Bin Laden was behind the September 11 terrorist attacks in the US.
"If the Taliban is given evidence that Osama bin Laden is involved" and the bombing campaign stopped, "we would be ready to hand him over to a third country", Mr Kabir added.
But it would have to be a state that would never "come under pressure from the United States", he said.
Mr Kabir urged America to halt its air campaign, now in its eighth day, and open negotiations. "If America were to step back from the current policy, then we could negotiate," he said. "Then we could discuss which third country."
Large explosions caused by American bombs and missiles have been reported to the south and east of the Afghan capital, Kabul, this evening.
The sky above the city has been filled with tracer fire from Taliban anti-aircraft guns once again.
Before the start of the air campaign, the Taliban had demanded evidence of Bin Laden's involvement in the attack and had offered to try him before an Islamic court inside Afghanistan - proposals that the US promptly rejected.
Al-Qaida warning an 'admission of guilt'
Threats of new terrorist strikes against Britain and the US from Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida group amount to an admission of guilt for the September 11 attacks, the deputy prime minister, John Prescott, said today.
Mr Prescott, speaking while on a diplomatic mission in Moscow, argued that the latest statement from al-Qaida strongly suggested Bin Laden's culpability for last month's attacks on New York and Washington.
"What I have heard about the message given ... is basically confirming, I think, the guilt of Bin Laden, who has made it clear that he wants to continue these actions," he told BBC1's Breakfast with Frost programme this morning.
The new threats from al-Qaida came from spokesman Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, in a video-taped statement broadcast on Qatar's Al-Jazeera Arabic TV news network.
He said Muslims in the US and Britain "should avoid travelling by air or living in high buildings or towers".
Americans and Britons were also warned to leave the Arabian Peninsula "because the land will burn with fire under their feet".
Washington dismissed the comments as "propaganda", while a Downing Street spokeswoman echoed Mr Prescott's comment that the threats amounted to an admission of guilt. (Full story)
Anti-US protests engulf Pakistani townThousands of anti-US protesters today converged on a southern Pakistani town, fighting pitched battles with police and paramilitary troops.
One person was killed and 24 were injured in the battles around Jacobabad, police said.
The desert city is the home of one of two air bases made available to US forces to support the air campaign against Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida network.
As rage grew over US-led air strikes on Afghanistan, one militant leader exhorted followers to set Shabaz airbase in Jacobabad on fire "at any cost", and another called on Pakistan's generals to overthrow the country's military ruler, General Pervez Musharraf.(Full story)
Cathedral cleared in 'powder' scare.
Firefighters wearing protective suits were this afternoon attempting to clear up white powder dropped in Canterbury Cathedral by a man reported to be of Arab appearance.
The cathedral was evacuated at around 2.30pm today after the man was seen dropping the powder in one of its chapels.
The fire brigade was called in to clear up the powder and take samples for analysis, amid heightened concerns about biological warfare attacks in Britain.
It is understood the powder is not thought to be a biological agent, such as anthrax, but the cathedral remains closed tonight as tests are carried out. (Full story)
UN commissioner warns of Afghan starvation threat
United Nations human rights commissioner Mary Robinson has called for a pause in the US-led bombing of Afghanistan to allow food aid into the country and prevent a "Rwanda-style" humanitarian disaster.
The former Irish president said that otherwise America and its allies could preside over the deaths from starvation of millions of people in Afghanistan.
Mrs Robinson, speaking to BBC1's Breakfast with Frost programme from Geneva, said helping Afghanistan's civilian population through the winter had to be a top priority. (Full story)
Okay, President Obama has inherited a mess,many messes in fact, including the mentality of the American public. Let's not forget that the Republicans got a majority of white voters' support! I always have thought Obama is a basically progressive person who prefers getting into real politics to standing on street corners waving placards. Politics is of course about deception, doing what is really possible, and compromises. I don't envy President Obama if he really wants to establish rule of law in the United states, if he really wants to work with other nations to make the world a better place. It's up to others to tell the truth and create some space for sanity.
55,000 "Non combat troops" will remain in Iraq? What's a "non combat" soldier.
Like many, I was inducted into the US Army but never actually saw combat. Did that mean I was a non combat soldier?
Back in the days of the draft there wee a few guys who were classified as conscientious objectors. They were able to prove to their draft boards and the Army that they had moral and religious scruples against all violence. Many of these guys were sent to work in hospitals and other civic activities for little pay. That satisfied their selective service requirements. Others were inducted trained and assigned to be combat medics. These were in the thick of battle. Some carried side arms for essential self defense, others not even that. So even these conscientious objectors were combatants. They were in combat.
I was given, like a couple of million others, a training over eight weeks that was called Basic Combat Training. I learned to fire, assemble, clean and maintain an automatic rifle. I learned hand to hand and bayonet combat techniques. Every soldier save these few conscientious objectors got this training. Even in Army clerk school we were assigned, carried and trained with rifles, and we did physical training to maintain our physical capabilities.
So, President Obama: What the heck is a non combat soldier?
Y0u used to say that the US presence in Iraq was illegal. Now you mush mouth with stories of non combat soldiers.
Back in the days of the draft there wee a few guys who were classified as conscientious objectors. They were able to prove to their draft boards and the Army that they had moral and religious scruples against all violence. Many of these guys were sent to work in hospitals and other civic activities for little pay. That satisfied their selective service requirements. Others were inducted trained and assigned to be combat medics. These were in the thick of battle. Some carried side arms for essential self defense, others not even that. So even these conscientious objectors were combatants. They were in combat.
I was given, like a couple of million others, a training over eight weeks that was called Basic Combat Training. I learned to fire, assemble, clean and maintain an automatic rifle. I learned hand to hand and bayonet combat techniques. Every soldier save these few conscientious objectors got this training. Even in Army clerk school we were assigned, carried and trained with rifles, and we did physical training to maintain our physical capabilities.
So, President Obama: What the heck is a non combat soldier?
Y0u used to say that the US presence in Iraq was illegal. Now you mush mouth with stories of non combat soldiers.
Saturday, May 23, 2009
Memorial Day: Remember the barracks trooper
My Biloxi Blues, And Ours
Funny, the main character in Neil Simon's flick Biloxi Blues was a
Jewish kid from Brooklyn named Eugene who goes through changes
in Combat Basic Training on an Army base in the Deep South and
by golly I also was a Jewish kid whose name was (and still is)
Eugene who did Basic Combat Training down South, (Fort Jackson,
South Carolina, right near Columbia, South Carolina.
I saw the movie for the first time in my life a couple of days
ago on HBO. I knew I'd have to say something here about it.
While the main character is named Eugene I related to the
other Jewish guy in the platoon, Arnold Epstein about as
much. My personality and my Basic Training Experiences
were something of a blend of those of the Hollywood Eugene
and Arnold, who I believe also hailed from Brooklyn.
I went into the Army a virgin like Eugene did but unlike
Eugene this was not changed during my Basic Training.
Not to digress, I know that the sixties were the years of free
love, sexual revolution, do your own thing, if it feels good do
it, etc. And I had been as a radical Jewish kid in New York
on the fringes of all that before I got drafted, but I was
socially retarded, and held back by this strange religious
upbringing I got in my nominally Jewish-atheist-strangely
Orthodox family.
This didn't stop me from getting the crabs before my second
weekend pass home, and that is a funny story. I probably
was the only soldier at Fort Benjamin Harrison, or maybe
in the whole Vietnam Era Army (this was after basic training,
at another Army post) who got the crabs without getting laid,
probably from dirty sheets in a motel that I stayed in while
on a twenty-four hour pass.
Unlike Eugene and unlike Arnold I was a conscious opponent of
the system and I had wreaked enough havoc at my induction
into the Army to have earned my own "fifteen minutes of fame"
on the front page of The Village Voice during the summer of 1967.
That's a whole long story that I might tell here some day, but
suffice it to say Military Intelligence was quite aware of me the
whole time I was in The Army, most intensly during my months
at Fort Jackson.
The Drill Sergeant in Eugene and Arnold's world was a hard
drinking mentally unbalanced guy named Sgt. Toomey who
had some sort of a Jewish problem. This Eugene (me) had a
similar Drill Sergeant but with a twist. My Drill Sergeant's
name was Greenwald and his main Jewish problem was me,
because I was known to be a communist and a Jew from Brooklyn
and another Jew from Brooklyn, a doctor named Levy, an
Army Medical Captain, (another draftee) was undergoing
courts-martial for refusing to train Special Forces troops in
First Aid procedures because they were war criminals nad
were going to use the skills he might provide to forward an
ongoing string of war crimes in Vietnam. Levy was an oddball
in other ways too. He had spent his off duty time working on
registering Black voters in Columbia South Carolina. These were
the early days of the Voting Rights Act. Only a few years previously
Black people just could not vote period in South Carolina or for
that matter in most of The South. (How everything old becomes
new again! Including in Ohio, in The North.)There was a lot of
fear remaining among Blacks who knew that their rulers did
not want them voting. People like Levy and I were the classic
Jewish trouble makers who put Sgt.Greenwald in a very bad spot.
Greenwald might have been the only Drill Sergeant on Fort
Jackson with so Jewish a name. I don't know to this day if
he was Jewish himself. What we knew was that he had grown
up in an orphanage in Illinois and that he was one very angry
and dangerous man.
Some differences between Neil Simon's basic training and mine:
I will not forget getting off that bus that took me to Company E
6th Training Batallion, Second Training Brigade. They were in
our faces without mercy and I remember crawling with my
duffle bag on my back (or was I pushing it? it is a bit fuzzy) to
my barrack. (Not just me, we all did.) We met Greenwald who
gave us his welcoming speech: "I've been training troops for combat
for twenty-one year, and every man I've sent into battle has been
killed in action."
The story we heard was that Greenwald had been an E-7 whose
promotion orders to E-8 had been cut but waiting for signature,
that he had sewed his E-8 stripes onto some of his fatgues already
when he got arrested by MPs in a bar fight in the NCO Club and
was busted down to E-6.
Training at E-6-2 was tougher than in Neil Simon's Basic Training
company, I can tell you that. Our Company Commander was a
short muscular body builder named Lieutenant Michini
(the spelling may be wrong but I'll stay with one "n") a First Lt.
who had no ribbons to show ever having served overseas and
who in fact soon went on to become a Captain and become Batallion
Executive Officer at Sixth Batallion, Second Training Brigade.
Michini liked to run backwards alongside the company on those
pre breakfast one mile runs.
It's funny how I have a hard time remembering the names of the
other trainees but not such a hard time remembering Greenwald
and Michini's names. Anyhow my Army was racially integrated
unlike Neil Simon's. In my Army the Drill Sergeants were profane.
In my Basic Training, (during the first four weeks of it) they'd harass
us while we tried to eat and would not allow any of us to finish a meal.
We ran miles justa bout every day up "drag ass hill" with rifles and
full packs, followed by physical training. Yes, push-ups were ordered
as informal punishment.
It might sound perverse to you but these were happy days, as well
as very scary ones.
Along with KP duty, which was posted and was given out in rotation
with exception of acting platoon leaders, etc., they had another kitchen
duty that was given out as punishment and was not rotational, the
name they gave this duty I do not remember but it was essentially KP
(Kitchen Police, or kitchen clean up) by another name. Greenwald gave
me this duty just about every day, after dinner. This turned out to be a
boon to me because some of the left overs that the NCO's didn't steal,
and I mean steal by the car load, (and there were plenty of left overs)
were available to me and I brought goodies back to my platoon when I
could, helping me in the PR war that was going on in the company regarding me.
Because I had refused to answer the Loyalty Oath and had smuggled into
Fort Hamilton Progressive Labor members and pacifists to help me disrupt
my induction into the Army I was at times pulled out of regular training and
taken to the Military/Intelligence office downtown Columbia, South Carolina,
sometimes in civies and sometimes in Dress Greens. This made me stand out.
Remind me to tell you about those interviews.
It's getting late I have more to say about our Biloxi Blues and more reminisces too.
I will pick up on this riff another time...
this post is my intellectual property and cannot be copied
without my permission. copyright 2006, Eugene Weixel.
.0.jpg)
Funny, the main character in Neil Simon's flick Biloxi Blues was a
Jewish kid from Brooklyn named Eugene who goes through changes
in Combat Basic Training on an Army base in the Deep South and
by golly I also was a Jewish kid whose name was (and still is)
Eugene who did Basic Combat Training down South, (Fort Jackson,
South Carolina, right near Columbia, South Carolina.
I saw the movie for the first time in my life a couple of days
ago on HBO. I knew I'd have to say something here about it.
While the main character is named Eugene I related to the
other Jewish guy in the platoon, Arnold Epstein about as
much. My personality and my Basic Training Experiences
were something of a blend of those of the Hollywood Eugene
and Arnold, who I believe also hailed from Brooklyn.
I went into the Army a virgin like Eugene did but unlike
Eugene this was not changed during my Basic Training.
Not to digress, I know that the sixties were the years of free
love, sexual revolution, do your own thing, if it feels good do
it, etc. And I had been as a radical Jewish kid in New York
on the fringes of all that before I got drafted, but I was
socially retarded, and held back by this strange religious
upbringing I got in my nominally Jewish-atheist-strangely
Orthodox family.
This didn't stop me from getting the crabs before my second
weekend pass home, and that is a funny story. I probably
was the only soldier at Fort Benjamin Harrison, or maybe
in the whole Vietnam Era Army (this was after basic training,
at another Army post) who got the crabs without getting laid,
probably from dirty sheets in a motel that I stayed in while
on a twenty-four hour pass.
Unlike Eugene and unlike Arnold I was a conscious opponent of
the system and I had wreaked enough havoc at my induction
into the Army to have earned my own "fifteen minutes of fame"
on the front page of The Village Voice during the summer of 1967.
That's a whole long story that I might tell here some day, but
suffice it to say Military Intelligence was quite aware of me the
whole time I was in The Army, most intensly during my months
at Fort Jackson.
The Drill Sergeant in Eugene and Arnold's world was a hard
drinking mentally unbalanced guy named Sgt. Toomey who
had some sort of a Jewish problem. This Eugene (me) had a
similar Drill Sergeant but with a twist. My Drill Sergeant's
name was Greenwald and his main Jewish problem was me,
because I was known to be a communist and a Jew from Brooklyn
and another Jew from Brooklyn, a doctor named Levy, an
Army Medical Captain, (another draftee) was undergoing
courts-martial for refusing to train Special Forces troops in
First Aid procedures because they were war criminals nad
were going to use the skills he might provide to forward an
ongoing string of war crimes in Vietnam. Levy was an oddball
in other ways too. He had spent his off duty time working on
registering Black voters in Columbia South Carolina. These were
the early days of the Voting Rights Act. Only a few years previously
Black people just could not vote period in South Carolina or for
that matter in most of The South. (How everything old becomes
new again! Including in Ohio, in The North.)There was a lot of
fear remaining among Blacks who knew that their rulers did
not want them voting. People like Levy and I were the classic
Jewish trouble makers who put Sgt.Greenwald in a very bad spot.
Greenwald might have been the only Drill Sergeant on Fort
Jackson with so Jewish a name. I don't know to this day if
he was Jewish himself. What we knew was that he had grown
up in an orphanage in Illinois and that he was one very angry
and dangerous man.
Some differences between Neil Simon's basic training and mine:
I will not forget getting off that bus that took me to Company E
6th Training Batallion, Second Training Brigade. They were in
our faces without mercy and I remember crawling with my
duffle bag on my back (or was I pushing it? it is a bit fuzzy) to
my barrack. (Not just me, we all did.) We met Greenwald who
gave us his welcoming speech: "I've been training troops for combat
for twenty-one year, and every man I've sent into battle has been
killed in action."
The story we heard was that Greenwald had been an E-7 whose
promotion orders to E-8 had been cut but waiting for signature,
that he had sewed his E-8 stripes onto some of his fatgues already
when he got arrested by MPs in a bar fight in the NCO Club and
was busted down to E-6.
Training at E-6-2 was tougher than in Neil Simon's Basic Training
company, I can tell you that. Our Company Commander was a
short muscular body builder named Lieutenant Michini
(the spelling may be wrong but I'll stay with one "n") a First Lt.
who had no ribbons to show ever having served overseas and
who in fact soon went on to become a Captain and become Batallion
Executive Officer at Sixth Batallion, Second Training Brigade.
Michini liked to run backwards alongside the company on those
pre breakfast one mile runs.
It's funny how I have a hard time remembering the names of the
other trainees but not such a hard time remembering Greenwald
and Michini's names. Anyhow my Army was racially integrated
unlike Neil Simon's. In my Army the Drill Sergeants were profane.
In my Basic Training, (during the first four weeks of it) they'd harass
us while we tried to eat and would not allow any of us to finish a meal.
We ran miles justa bout every day up "drag ass hill" with rifles and
full packs, followed by physical training. Yes, push-ups were ordered
as informal punishment.
It might sound perverse to you but these were happy days, as well
as very scary ones.
Along with KP duty, which was posted and was given out in rotation
with exception of acting platoon leaders, etc., they had another kitchen
duty that was given out as punishment and was not rotational, the
name they gave this duty I do not remember but it was essentially KP
(Kitchen Police, or kitchen clean up) by another name. Greenwald gave
me this duty just about every day, after dinner. This turned out to be a
boon to me because some of the left overs that the NCO's didn't steal,
and I mean steal by the car load, (and there were plenty of left overs)
were available to me and I brought goodies back to my platoon when I
could, helping me in the PR war that was going on in the company regarding me.
Because I had refused to answer the Loyalty Oath and had smuggled into
Fort Hamilton Progressive Labor members and pacifists to help me disrupt
my induction into the Army I was at times pulled out of regular training and
taken to the Military/Intelligence office downtown Columbia, South Carolina,
sometimes in civies and sometimes in Dress Greens. This made me stand out.
Remind me to tell you about those interviews.
It's getting late I have more to say about our Biloxi Blues and more reminisces too.
I will pick up on this riff another time...
this post is my intellectual property and cannot be copied
without my permission. copyright 2006, Eugene Weixel.
My War Story
How I Tripped Over A Wrinkle In The Uniform code Of Military Justice
(Special thanks to two racist cops and George Corley Wallace). It was October 1968, a strange time to be alive. I was an unwilling member of Lyndon Baines Johnson's army, back home in New York on a thirty day leave, under orders to go back to Fort Lewis in November for transport to the Republic of Vietnam, where I was going to be a replacement.
That was the year three men were running for the White House. The most despicable of the three was a man who had said this: Today I have stood where Jefferson Davis stood and took an oath to my people. It is very appropriate then that from this Cradle of the Confederacy, this very heart of the great Anglo-Saxon Southland, that today we sound the drum for freedom. . . . In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny. And I say, Segregation now! Segregation tomorrow! Segregation forever!(1) George Wallace, 1962 Governor's Inaugural Address
I didn't like politicians, and I especially didn't like that one. Little did I realize as I sat on the plane taking me from SeaTac Airport in Washington State that this man and a racist cop named Scheiskopf would be keeping me safe and sound. I had been home a while, moping, sweating, fretting and worrying, making plans and alternate plans, losing myself in Alice's Restaurant fantasies, flipping out. I was sitting in front of my parents' TV watching a newscast (me being very downcast I was not doing the standard "boy's night out" kind of 30 day leave in New York.) Paul O'Dwyer was there standing in front of a crowd of Garment Worker Union members urging them and "all decent New Yorkers" to come to Madison Square Garden to show the world that New York rejects George Wallace, who had a big rally scheduled there that night. I decided to go there, by myself. I was depressed but wanted to make my little statement. I expected to get there and be herded behind a police barricade with a few hundred others, walk around shouting slogans, and go home. This was not to be.
As I made my way from the Herald Square subway station along 34th street I could see a crowd forming up. As I got closer I saw that there were no police barricades. I hung around a while but things started to get ugly in a way I had never seen first hand, and frankly had never expected to see in the middle of Manhattan, ever. The crowd continued to grow and horse mounted cops were making individual forays into the crowd, swinging night sticks, trampling people and shouting obscenities. I had two impulses, one to run and the other to refuse to run. This was outrageous. I found myself being chased east down 33rd Street by a mounted cop at full gallop. Thanks to my good GI training I was able to hurl myself over a parked car and onto the sidewalk, relatively safe from him. I looked around, and saw two black men sprawled out on the staircase of the 34th Street 8th Avenue subway, their heads bleeding. I could hear sirens and shattering glass. I decided on a strategic retreat. As I ran towards the East, I collided into Bob Riley, a long time neighborhood fixture, known to many affectionately as "the black Irishman." I don't know who was more surprised, Riley or me. We didn't have much time to catch up on old times at that minute. We both agreed to head north at 7th Avenue, find a tavern, and empty a few glasses. This was not to be.
As we reached Seventh Avenue we could see that the Avenue itself was lined with parked buses, that had brought the Wallacites from points along the East Coast to their rally in "enemy territory." Before we could cross 34th Street a Navy Blue unmarked cop car pulled up and two beefy men jumped out. Another cop car, this one a squad car, pulled up quickly alongside, and we found ourselves being shoved against a parked bus, our faces pounded by two plainclothes cops where were shouting "ni@@er" and "f***in' ni@@er lover!" Before I knew what happened I was in the back of the squad car handcuffed to Riley. A Sergeant and a plainclothes were in front. Another plainclothes squeezed into the back alongside of us. Several blackjack whacks to the kneecap and several punches in the face later we pulled up outside the Midtown South precinct. Of course we had been promised on this short ride that we were going to "wake up in the fucking hospital." This also was not to be.
There were about five or six photographers outside the precinct and the Sergeant muttered "shit if they walk in they have to walk out." I quickly found myself on a staircase tumbling on top of Riley, still handcuffed to him. The next morning we stood before a judge at the Tombs on Center Street after spending the night standing in a packed cell with a few dozen black men who were in varying states of injury. (There was one toilet without the inside this cell or more appropriately bullpen.) The judge was shouting something at me about my demeanor as I heard that we were being charged with Riot I, Encitement to Riot, Reckless Endangerment, Attempted Felonious Assault and of course, Resisting Arrest. To my surprise the Military Police were not waitng for me. I realized later that this was because I had not (yet anyhow) violated the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
I got bailed out by my parents that night, and Riley got out the next day. A clerk gave me a piece of paper directing me to return to Manhattan Criminal Court on November 15. The only problem was, I had another peice of paper issued by The Army ordering me to return to Fort Lewis on November 6, to the US Army Replacement Station there, for transport to Vietnam. The next morning I packed my things and headed down to the infamous Whitehall Street, where this particular dream had begun a year earlier. I thought that for sure, my 30 day leave had been cut short. This was not the case:
UNIFORM CODE OF MILITARY JUSTICE "814. ART. 14. DELIVERY OF OFFENDERS TO CIVIL AUTHORITIES (a) Under such regulations as the Secretary concerned may prescribe, a member of the armed forces accused of an offense against civil authority may be delivered, upon request, to the civil authority for trial. (b) When delivery under this article is made to any civil authority of a person undergoing sentence of a court-martial, the delivery, if followed by conviction in a civil tribunal, interrupts the execution of the sentence of the court-martial, and the offender after having answered to the civil authorities for his offense shall, upon the request of competent military authority, be returned to military custody for the completion of his sentence. "
;)
All this meant that I was not going to stand court-martial prior to conviction in the civilian court, and that the military was going to produce me for trial at 100 Center Street, New York, New York on November 15.
I walked in to Whitehall Street dragging my duffle bag behind me expecting to be whisked away to the Detention Center at Fort Monmouth. I walked up to the desk in the lobby, handed the Sergeant there both of my pieces of paper and waited for the MP's. The Sergeant brought me in to see the Lieutenant, and the Lieutenant brought me in to see a Captain named Fubar. After it was all over they had me wait in the lobby. The Sergeant called me to his desk and gave me a mimeographed order to report to Fort Hamilton, Brooklyn in two weeks! He told me to enjoy the rest of my leave. that was that.
At Fort Hamilton they put me on a bus to Fort Wadsworth, Staten Island, a satellite base of Hamilton. They assigned me to be a clerk (I had Army Personnel Records training - another story.) I had permission to live off base (at my parent's apartment) and reported every morning at 6:00 AM to formation. Well, folks, back in those days when cops and Assistant District Attorneys wanted to hurt political demonstrators they would contrive to delay the trial. For the average defendant this meant repeated court appearances. Riley finally lost his job, inspite of all the lies he had to tell his boss to explain the days he would have to take off . If Officer Scheiskopf would show up at a hearing then Dreksau would be out sick. If Dreksau showed up Scheiskopf would be on vacation, and on and on it went. Now this had a salutory effect on my situation. The long and the short of it was that I didn't actually stand trial until I was out of the Army. I was home free. I was convicted of disorderly conduct, appealed that one and won. And that's my war story.
BAD KARMA IN THE HOUSE OF DREKSAU
Every once in a while I still get a sharp wince of pain in my left knee, the knee that Officer Dreksau hammered with his blackjack on that night in October of 1968. Nevertheless Officers Scheiskopf, Dreksau and George Wallace had taken an enormous burden off my shoulders on that night. I didn't have to go to Vietnam, or exile, or jail. A few years after that night I was back in college in Staten Island, in a rented campus near the ferry.
One afternoon after class as I was walking to the ferry I heard someone shout my name. I looked around and immediately recognized Officer Dreksau, with Scheiskopf standing right there beside him, gesturing towards me as they walked in my direction. Dreksau was not in uniform, just as he had not been in uniform the night he became my Arresting Officer. We strode towards each other and as we got close, he threw his arm around my shoulder and asked me with a big grin on his face "How ya doin' buddy!? Are ya stayin' outta trouble? how's that other guy, what's his name, Riley?!" "I'm fine" I answered. "Been out of trouble since that night. I don't know where Riley even is." "Well, if ya run inta him again, tell him I said hello."
Around ten years later...... I'm driving a taxi down Seventh Avenue with a busted headlight and I pick up a frantic woman with lots of luggage in front of Penn Station. I tell her that I have to get the headlight replaced, it should take only a couple of minutes and I head for the 24 hour service station at 27th and 11th. I pull in to the place and it looks like no one's there, even with the big sign that says "Open Seven Days A Week, 24 Hours A Day." I blow my horn and no one moves. I head out of the gas station onto 11th Avenue (this is where I turned on the meter) past the cop car that's sitting by the driveway when the cop hits his siren. This real young cop comes out, takes my license and registration and sits in his car talking with his partner. Fifteen minutes later he hands me three tickets: 1- Going through the gas station to avoid a red light. 2-Broken headlight ( that's an easy one to fix). 3- Red light. I look at the scrawl on the tickets and this name jumps up at me : Dreksau. Now, he's not my Dreksau, he's much younger than my Dreksau. He could be his son, nephew, cousin or just a guy with the same last name. The lady was ticked off but she was nice enough to give me her name and her address at work. It took more than a year though for her to reply to my plaintive requests for a letter describing the events of that night. In the meantime this same Dreksau bags me once again, this time he is in a big cop van with maybe six other cops in there with him and they're crawling along blocking the driveway on the 45th Street side of the Marriot Marquis. I swing around and there goes the siren. Now here comes Dreksau the younger, big grin on his face. "It's you again (you couldn't miss me with my beard) You cut me off." He takes my stuff and comes back around fifteen minutes later with a ticket for cutting him off. This one I paid. After a year of adjournments I get the lady's excuse letter and go for trial on the three tickets. (The headlight one had been taken care of by a letter from the garage.)
Now we get to court and he lies. He says the red light and the avoiding red light tickets were the only ones he wrote. He says I had no passenger. I demolished the sunuvabitch. The guy was shaking, really trembling and on the verge of tears and he asks the judge for a "do over!" Now I know this is not just another traffic stop for this guy, this is important to him. The judge gently reminded him that The State doesn't get the opportunity to appeal findings of "not guilty." A few weeks later I saw in the papers that a young cop named Dreksau had put a service revolver into his mouth and blown his brains out.
copyright Eugene Weixel all rights reserved
(Special thanks to two racist cops and George Corley Wallace). It was October 1968, a strange time to be alive. I was an unwilling member of Lyndon Baines Johnson's army, back home in New York on a thirty day leave, under orders to go back to Fort Lewis in November for transport to the Republic of Vietnam, where I was going to be a replacement.
That was the year three men were running for the White House. The most despicable of the three was a man who had said this: Today I have stood where Jefferson Davis stood and took an oath to my people. It is very appropriate then that from this Cradle of the Confederacy, this very heart of the great Anglo-Saxon Southland, that today we sound the drum for freedom. . . . In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny. And I say, Segregation now! Segregation tomorrow! Segregation forever!(1) George Wallace, 1962 Governor's Inaugural Address
I didn't like politicians, and I especially didn't like that one. Little did I realize as I sat on the plane taking me from SeaTac Airport in Washington State that this man and a racist cop named Scheiskopf would be keeping me safe and sound. I had been home a while, moping, sweating, fretting and worrying, making plans and alternate plans, losing myself in Alice's Restaurant fantasies, flipping out. I was sitting in front of my parents' TV watching a newscast (me being very downcast I was not doing the standard "boy's night out" kind of 30 day leave in New York.) Paul O'Dwyer was there standing in front of a crowd of Garment Worker Union members urging them and "all decent New Yorkers" to come to Madison Square Garden to show the world that New York rejects George Wallace, who had a big rally scheduled there that night. I decided to go there, by myself. I was depressed but wanted to make my little statement. I expected to get there and be herded behind a police barricade with a few hundred others, walk around shouting slogans, and go home. This was not to be.
As I made my way from the Herald Square subway station along 34th street I could see a crowd forming up. As I got closer I saw that there were no police barricades. I hung around a while but things started to get ugly in a way I had never seen first hand, and frankly had never expected to see in the middle of Manhattan, ever. The crowd continued to grow and horse mounted cops were making individual forays into the crowd, swinging night sticks, trampling people and shouting obscenities. I had two impulses, one to run and the other to refuse to run. This was outrageous. I found myself being chased east down 33rd Street by a mounted cop at full gallop. Thanks to my good GI training I was able to hurl myself over a parked car and onto the sidewalk, relatively safe from him. I looked around, and saw two black men sprawled out on the staircase of the 34th Street 8th Avenue subway, their heads bleeding. I could hear sirens and shattering glass. I decided on a strategic retreat. As I ran towards the East, I collided into Bob Riley, a long time neighborhood fixture, known to many affectionately as "the black Irishman." I don't know who was more surprised, Riley or me. We didn't have much time to catch up on old times at that minute. We both agreed to head north at 7th Avenue, find a tavern, and empty a few glasses. This was not to be.
As we reached Seventh Avenue we could see that the Avenue itself was lined with parked buses, that had brought the Wallacites from points along the East Coast to their rally in "enemy territory." Before we could cross 34th Street a Navy Blue unmarked cop car pulled up and two beefy men jumped out. Another cop car, this one a squad car, pulled up quickly alongside, and we found ourselves being shoved against a parked bus, our faces pounded by two plainclothes cops where were shouting "ni@@er" and "f***in' ni@@er lover!" Before I knew what happened I was in the back of the squad car handcuffed to Riley. A Sergeant and a plainclothes were in front. Another plainclothes squeezed into the back alongside of us. Several blackjack whacks to the kneecap and several punches in the face later we pulled up outside the Midtown South precinct. Of course we had been promised on this short ride that we were going to "wake up in the fucking hospital." This also was not to be.
There were about five or six photographers outside the precinct and the Sergeant muttered "shit if they walk in they have to walk out." I quickly found myself on a staircase tumbling on top of Riley, still handcuffed to him. The next morning we stood before a judge at the Tombs on Center Street after spending the night standing in a packed cell with a few dozen black men who were in varying states of injury. (There was one toilet without the inside this cell or more appropriately bullpen.) The judge was shouting something at me about my demeanor as I heard that we were being charged with Riot I, Encitement to Riot, Reckless Endangerment, Attempted Felonious Assault and of course, Resisting Arrest. To my surprise the Military Police were not waitng for me. I realized later that this was because I had not (yet anyhow) violated the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
I got bailed out by my parents that night, and Riley got out the next day. A clerk gave me a piece of paper directing me to return to Manhattan Criminal Court on November 15. The only problem was, I had another peice of paper issued by The Army ordering me to return to Fort Lewis on November 6, to the US Army Replacement Station there, for transport to Vietnam. The next morning I packed my things and headed down to the infamous Whitehall Street, where this particular dream had begun a year earlier. I thought that for sure, my 30 day leave had been cut short. This was not the case:
UNIFORM CODE OF MILITARY JUSTICE "814. ART. 14. DELIVERY OF OFFENDERS TO CIVIL AUTHORITIES (a) Under such regulations as the Secretary concerned may prescribe, a member of the armed forces accused of an offense against civil authority may be delivered, upon request, to the civil authority for trial. (b) When delivery under this article is made to any civil authority of a person undergoing sentence of a court-martial, the delivery, if followed by conviction in a civil tribunal, interrupts the execution of the sentence of the court-martial, and the offender after having answered to the civil authorities for his offense shall, upon the request of competent military authority, be returned to military custody for the completion of his sentence. "
;)
All this meant that I was not going to stand court-martial prior to conviction in the civilian court, and that the military was going to produce me for trial at 100 Center Street, New York, New York on November 15.
I walked in to Whitehall Street dragging my duffle bag behind me expecting to be whisked away to the Detention Center at Fort Monmouth. I walked up to the desk in the lobby, handed the Sergeant there both of my pieces of paper and waited for the MP's. The Sergeant brought me in to see the Lieutenant, and the Lieutenant brought me in to see a Captain named Fubar. After it was all over they had me wait in the lobby. The Sergeant called me to his desk and gave me a mimeographed order to report to Fort Hamilton, Brooklyn in two weeks! He told me to enjoy the rest of my leave. that was that.
At Fort Hamilton they put me on a bus to Fort Wadsworth, Staten Island, a satellite base of Hamilton. They assigned me to be a clerk (I had Army Personnel Records training - another story.) I had permission to live off base (at my parent's apartment) and reported every morning at 6:00 AM to formation. Well, folks, back in those days when cops and Assistant District Attorneys wanted to hurt political demonstrators they would contrive to delay the trial. For the average defendant this meant repeated court appearances. Riley finally lost his job, inspite of all the lies he had to tell his boss to explain the days he would have to take off . If Officer Scheiskopf would show up at a hearing then Dreksau would be out sick. If Dreksau showed up Scheiskopf would be on vacation, and on and on it went. Now this had a salutory effect on my situation. The long and the short of it was that I didn't actually stand trial until I was out of the Army. I was home free. I was convicted of disorderly conduct, appealed that one and won. And that's my war story.
BAD KARMA IN THE HOUSE OF DREKSAU
Every once in a while I still get a sharp wince of pain in my left knee, the knee that Officer Dreksau hammered with his blackjack on that night in October of 1968. Nevertheless Officers Scheiskopf, Dreksau and George Wallace had taken an enormous burden off my shoulders on that night. I didn't have to go to Vietnam, or exile, or jail. A few years after that night I was back in college in Staten Island, in a rented campus near the ferry.
One afternoon after class as I was walking to the ferry I heard someone shout my name. I looked around and immediately recognized Officer Dreksau, with Scheiskopf standing right there beside him, gesturing towards me as they walked in my direction. Dreksau was not in uniform, just as he had not been in uniform the night he became my Arresting Officer. We strode towards each other and as we got close, he threw his arm around my shoulder and asked me with a big grin on his face "How ya doin' buddy!? Are ya stayin' outta trouble? how's that other guy, what's his name, Riley?!" "I'm fine" I answered. "Been out of trouble since that night. I don't know where Riley even is." "Well, if ya run inta him again, tell him I said hello."
Around ten years later...... I'm driving a taxi down Seventh Avenue with a busted headlight and I pick up a frantic woman with lots of luggage in front of Penn Station. I tell her that I have to get the headlight replaced, it should take only a couple of minutes and I head for the 24 hour service station at 27th and 11th. I pull in to the place and it looks like no one's there, even with the big sign that says "Open Seven Days A Week, 24 Hours A Day." I blow my horn and no one moves. I head out of the gas station onto 11th Avenue (this is where I turned on the meter) past the cop car that's sitting by the driveway when the cop hits his siren. This real young cop comes out, takes my license and registration and sits in his car talking with his partner. Fifteen minutes later he hands me three tickets: 1- Going through the gas station to avoid a red light. 2-Broken headlight ( that's an easy one to fix). 3- Red light. I look at the scrawl on the tickets and this name jumps up at me : Dreksau. Now, he's not my Dreksau, he's much younger than my Dreksau. He could be his son, nephew, cousin or just a guy with the same last name. The lady was ticked off but she was nice enough to give me her name and her address at work. It took more than a year though for her to reply to my plaintive requests for a letter describing the events of that night. In the meantime this same Dreksau bags me once again, this time he is in a big cop van with maybe six other cops in there with him and they're crawling along blocking the driveway on the 45th Street side of the Marriot Marquis. I swing around and there goes the siren. Now here comes Dreksau the younger, big grin on his face. "It's you again (you couldn't miss me with my beard) You cut me off." He takes my stuff and comes back around fifteen minutes later with a ticket for cutting him off. This one I paid. After a year of adjournments I get the lady's excuse letter and go for trial on the three tickets. (The headlight one had been taken care of by a letter from the garage.)
Now we get to court and he lies. He says the red light and the avoiding red light tickets were the only ones he wrote. He says I had no passenger. I demolished the sunuvabitch. The guy was shaking, really trembling and on the verge of tears and he asks the judge for a "do over!" Now I know this is not just another traffic stop for this guy, this is important to him. The judge gently reminded him that The State doesn't get the opportunity to appeal findings of "not guilty." A few weeks later I saw in the papers that a young cop named Dreksau had put a service revolver into his mouth and blown his brains out.
copyright Eugene Weixel all rights reserved
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
May 19
Vietnamese who had collaborated with the US invasion of their country try to flee from the roof of the US Embassy in Saigon (Now Ho Chi Minh City)
Ho Chi Minh
May 19, 1890 – September 2, 1969
Malcolm X
May 19, 1925 – February 21, 1965
Dead Palestinian babies and bombed mosques - IDF fashion 2009
Mainstream Israeli media and academics have more leeway to criticize Israhell and even "The Jews" than really exists in the United States. Here an Israeli mainstream newspaper tells of the barbaric mind set of Israhelli soldiers:
From the newspaper Haaretz:
Dead Palestinian babies and bombed mosques - IDF fashion 2009
By Uri Blau
Tags: Israel News, IDF, Gaza
The office at the Adiv fabric-printing shop in south Tel Aviv handles a constant stream of customers, many of them soldiers in uniform, who come to order custom clothing featuring their unit's insignia, usually accompanied by a slogan and drawing of their choosing. Elsewhere on the premises, the sketches are turned into plates used for imprinting the ordered items, mainly T-shirts and baseball caps, but also hoodies, fleece jackets and pants. A young Arab man from Jaffa supervises the workers who imprint the words and pictures, and afterward hands over the finished product.
Dead babies, mothers weeping on their children's graves, a gun aimed at a child and bombed-out mosques - these are a few examples of the images Israel Defense Forces soldiers design these days to print on shirts they order to mark the end of training, or of field duty. The slogans accompanying the drawings are not exactly anemic either: A T-shirt for infantry snipers bears the inscription "Better use Durex," next to a picture of a dead Palestinian baby, with his weeping mother and a teddy bear beside him. A sharpshooter's T-shirt from the Givati Brigade's Shaked battalion shows a pregnant Palestinian woman with a bull's-eye superimposed on her belly, with the slogan, in English, "1 shot, 2 kills." A "graduation" shirt for those who have completed another snipers course depicts a Palestinian baby, who grows into a combative boy and then an armed adult, with the inscription, "No matter how it begins, we'll put an end to it."
There are also plenty of shirts with blatant sexual messages. For example, the Lavi battalion produced a shirt featuring a drawing of a soldier next to a young woman with bruises, and the slogan, "Bet you got raped!" A few of the images underscore actions whose existence the army officially denies - such as "confirming the kill" (shooting a bullet into an enemy victim's head from close range, to ensure he is dead), or harming religious sites, or female or child non-combatants.
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In many cases, the content is submitted for approval to one of the unit's commanders. The latter, however, do not always have control over what gets printed, because the artwork is a private initiative of soldiers that they never hear about. Drawings or slogans previously banned in certain units have been approved for distribution elsewhere. For example, shirts declaring, "We won't chill 'til we confirm the kill" were banned in the past (the IDF claims that the practice doesn't exist), yet the Haruv battalion printed some last year.
The slogan "Let every Arab mother know that her son's fate is in my hands!" had previously been banned for use on another infantry unit's shirt. A Givati soldier said this week, however, that at the end of last year, his platoon printed up dozens of shirts, fleece jackets and pants bearing this slogan.
"It has a drawing depicting a soldier as the Angel of Death, next to a gun and an Arab town," he explains. "The text was very powerful. The funniest part was that when our soldier came to get the shirts, the man who printed them was an Arab, and the soldier felt so bad that he told the girl at the counter to bring them to him."
Does the design go to the commanders for approval?
The Givati soldier: "Usually the shirts undergo a selection process by some officer, but in this case, they were approved at the level of platoon sergeant. We ordered shirts for 30 soldiers and they were really into it, and everyone wanted several items and paid NIS 200 on average."
What do you think of the slogan that was printed?
"I didn't like it so much, but most of the soldiers wanted it."
Many controversial shirts have been ordered by graduates of snipers courses, which bring together soldiers from various units. In 2006, soldiers from the "Carmon Team" course for elite-unit marksmen printed a shirt with a drawing of a knife-wielding Palestinian in the crosshairs of a gun sight, and the slogan, "You've got to run fast, run fast, run fast, before it's all over." Below is a drawing of Arab women weeping over a grave and the words: "And afterward they cry, and afterward they cry." [The inscriptions are riffs on a popular song.] Another sniper's shirt also features an Arab man in the crosshairs, and the announcement, "Everything is with the best of intentions."
G., a soldier in an elite unit who has done a snipers course, explained that, "it's a type of bonding process, and also it's well known that anyone who is a sniper is messed up in the head. Our shirts have a lot of double entendres, for example: 'Bad people with good aims.' Every group that finishes a course puts out stuff like that."
When are these shirts worn?
G. "These are shirts for around the house, for jogging, in the army. Not for going out. Sometimes people will ask you what it's about."
Of the shirt depicting a bull's-eye on a pregnant woman, he said: "There are people who think it's not right, and I think so as well, but it doesn't really mean anything. I mean it's not like someone is gonna go and shoot a pregnant woman."
What is the idea behind the shirt from July 2007, which has an image of a child with the slogan "Smaller - harder!"?
"It's a kid, so you've got a little more of a problem, morally, and also the target is smaller."
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Larouche's wild predictions: Not Obama, Not Clinton, Not McCain But Bloomberg IS (Was) The "Predetermined" Next President
and so on.
I don't like Michael Bloomberg. Apparently neither does Lyndon Larouche. I'm against Malthusianism and I believe that there are far from "too many people" on this earth. The Larouchies say the same things I do on this matter. Prince Philip once (or more than once) said he wants to be reincarnated as a virus so he could obliterate "excess people." I'm sure Bloomberg, at least in his heart of hearts is with the Prince on this.
Some people say that the ruling elites are all related and are in fact reptilians in disguise. The words of the Prince and the deeds of people like Bloomberg certainly are cold blooded and inhuman in fact. Perhaps they may as well be gekkos in disguise.
To me "excess people" are those who say others (Usually dark skinned) are "excess people."
Back in June 2006 I had an encounter with Larouchies. They told me that by September or not later than October 2006 the economy would collapse. I asked one of them if he meant that when people would go to the ATM nothing would come out? Yes, said one of the Larouchies.
Lots of people were able to see back in those days that the credit driven economy was headed for trouble, with unemployed people said to be buying half million dollar houses with no money down but no one was predicting how it would play out, how severe it would be or just when it would be apparent to all that the economy was in decline.
Larouche is a bit like the broken clock. He could be right twice a day. Here in this video the Larouchies froth about Bloomberg's imminent run for and "predetermined" coronation as President, and the coming media trashing of Obama.(This didn't happen, but it's quite possible that within the next eight years Obama could get the full "Lewinsky" or "Watergated." File that under "Things that could possibly happen." Perhaps the Larouchies claim that they, through their literature tables and You Tube video stopped this nefarious Rohatyn orchestrated Anglo-Dutch plot.
Beware glassy eyed cultists.
Cult /
The "Financial Crash"
FEAR: It is 'One minute to midnight...' '''World War III''' ><<>
"...the public record shows that I am probably the world' s best forecaster living during the past 40 years..." (1010. THE COMING DISINTEGRATION OF FINANCIAL MARKETS, by Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.; EIR; June 24, 1994. Since this was written in 1994, that means LaRouche considers himself the best economic forecaster since... 1954!)
"Every forecast I've ever published has been confirmed. I'm the most successful economic forecaster in existence, today, on this planet!" (26) 26. SCHILLER INSTITUTE - Labor Day Conference September 1-2, 2001.
Larouche's many many predictions of imminent crash and or hyperinflation.
Oh yeah, about all those revelations like "Obama is Bush's fourteenth cousin twice removed" (or whomever and the Queen of Holland) that rightist "anti globalists" are fond of telling everyone about:
by Joe Kissel
Let’s start with a few uncontroversial facts. You were directly descended from two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents, and so on. So as you go back in time, the number of your ancestors increases. Go back far enough and you’ll find millions or perhaps trillions of forebears in your personal lineage. The same, of course, is true for everyone else. But as you go back in time the total population of the world decreases, meaning that the farther back you look, the more likely you are to encounter someone who was a common ancestor of any two random people alive today. So far so good? OK, the question then becomes: How far must you go back in time to find someone who is a common ancestor of everyone alive today? And for bonus points, who might that have been?
Assocciated Press:
NEW YORK — Lee Drew had a chat with some cousins the other day.He was sitting in his home office in Orem, Utah. Four of the cousins were in England. One was in Australia, another in South Africa. A few more joined in from other parts of North America.Drew is one of a new breed of genealogists who are doing things that would have been impossible in the not-so-distant era of dusty archives and whirring microfilm readers.• Click here for Lee Drew's Web site,
I don't like Michael Bloomberg. Apparently neither does Lyndon Larouche. I'm against Malthusianism and I believe that there are far from "too many people" on this earth. The Larouchies say the same things I do on this matter. Prince Philip once (or more than once) said he wants to be reincarnated as a virus so he could obliterate "excess people." I'm sure Bloomberg, at least in his heart of hearts is with the Prince on this.
Some people say that the ruling elites are all related and are in fact reptilians in disguise. The words of the Prince and the deeds of people like Bloomberg certainly are cold blooded and inhuman in fact. Perhaps they may as well be gekkos in disguise.
To me "excess people" are those who say others (Usually dark skinned) are "excess people."
Back in June 2006 I had an encounter with Larouchies. They told me that by September or not later than October 2006 the economy would collapse. I asked one of them if he meant that when people would go to the ATM nothing would come out? Yes, said one of the Larouchies.
Lots of people were able to see back in those days that the credit driven economy was headed for trouble, with unemployed people said to be buying half million dollar houses with no money down but no one was predicting how it would play out, how severe it would be or just when it would be apparent to all that the economy was in decline.
Larouche is a bit like the broken clock. He could be right twice a day. Here in this video the Larouchies froth about Bloomberg's imminent run for and "predetermined" coronation as President, and the coming media trashing of Obama.(This didn't happen, but it's quite possible that within the next eight years Obama could get the full "Lewinsky" or "Watergated." File that under "Things that could possibly happen." Perhaps the Larouchies claim that they, through their literature tables and You Tube video stopped this nefarious Rohatyn orchestrated Anglo-Dutch plot.
Beware glassy eyed cultists.
Cult /
The "Financial Crash"
FEAR: It is 'One minute to midnight...' '''World War III''' ><<>
"...the public record shows that I am probably the world' s best forecaster living during the past 40 years..." (1010. THE COMING DISINTEGRATION OF FINANCIAL MARKETS, by Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.; EIR; June 24, 1994. Since this was written in 1994, that means LaRouche considers himself the best economic forecaster since... 1954!)
"Every forecast I've ever published has been confirmed. I'm the most successful economic forecaster in existence, today, on this planet!" (26) 26. SCHILLER INSTITUTE - Labor Day Conference September 1-2, 2001.
Larouche's many many predictions of imminent crash and or hyperinflation.
Oh yeah, about all those revelations like "Obama is Bush's fourteenth cousin twice removed" (or whomever and the Queen of Holland) that rightist "anti globalists" are fond of telling everyone about:
by Joe Kissel
Let’s start with a few uncontroversial facts. You were directly descended from two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents, and so on. So as you go back in time, the number of your ancestors increases. Go back far enough and you’ll find millions or perhaps trillions of forebears in your personal lineage. The same, of course, is true for everyone else. But as you go back in time the total population of the world decreases, meaning that the farther back you look, the more likely you are to encounter someone who was a common ancestor of any two random people alive today. So far so good? OK, the question then becomes: How far must you go back in time to find someone who is a common ancestor of everyone alive today? And for bonus points, who might that have been?
Assocciated Press:
NEW YORK — Lee Drew had a chat with some cousins the other day.He was sitting in his home office in Orem, Utah. Four of the cousins were in England. One was in Australia, another in South Africa. A few more joined in from other parts of North America.Drew is one of a new breed of genealogists who are doing things that would have been impossible in the not-so-distant era of dusty archives and whirring microfilm readers.• Click here for Lee Drew's Web site,
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